> CommCell Console > Backup and Restore Agents > Virtualization > Virtual Server Agent > Cross-Hypervisor Restores (Virtual Machine Conversion) > Converting from VMware or Hyper-V to Amazon

Amazon EBS Direct Transport Mode for Backups, Restores, Replications, and Conversions to Amazon EC2

The Amazon EBS Direct transport mode for backups, restores, replications, and conversions to Amazon EC2 provides the best performance and cost optimization and handles operations across regions, Availability Zones (AZ), and AWS accounts.

Note

Performance

For Amazon EBS volumes that were created from Amazon EBS snapshots, the storage blocks must be pulled from Amazon S3 and written to the Amazon EBS volume before you can access them.

This preliminary action takes time and can cause a significant increase in the latency of I/O operations the first time each block is accessed.

Amazon EBS volume-level performance is achieved after all blocks are downloaded and written to the Amazon EBS volume.

Supported Guest Operating Systems

Windows

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2025 with legal notice (Standard, Datacenter) (64-bit only)

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2025 (Standard, Datacenter) (64-bit only)

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2022 (Standard, Datacenter) (64-bit only)

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2019 (Standard, Datacenter) (64-bit only)

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2016 (Standard, Datacenter) (64-bit only)

  • Microsoft Windows 10 (Home, Professional, Enterprise, Education) (US English) (64-bit only)

Linux

  • Alma Linux 8.4

  • Alma Linux 9.6

  • Amazon Linux 2.x

  • CentOS 9.x

  • CentOS 7.x

  • Oracle Linux 9.x

  • Oracle Linux 8.x

  • Oracle Linux 7.x

  • Oracle Linux 6.x

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.x

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.x

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.x

  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.x

  • Rocky Linux 9.x

  • Rocky Linux 8.x

  • SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15 and above

  • Ubuntu 22.x

  • Ubuntu 21.10

  • Ubuntu 20.04

  • Ubuntu 18.04

  • Ubuntu 17.04

  • Ubuntu 16.10

  • Ubuntu 16.04

  • Ubuntu 15.04

  • Ubuntu 14.10

  • Ubuntu 14.04

Supported EBS Volume Partitioning

Amazon EC2 instances with Amazon EBS volumes that use Master Boot Record (MBR) and GUID Partition Table (GPT) partitioning are supported, for both OS and data volumes, for both Windows and Linux.

Requirements

Windows Source VMs

  • You must enable Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP).

  • To access the restored, replicated, or converted Amazon EC2 instances, you must configure your host firewall (Windows firewall or similar) to allow access to RDP and to network discovery.

Linux Source VMs

  • To access the restored, replicted, or converted Amazon EC2 instances, you must enable Secure Shell (SSH), and the host firewall (such as Linux iptables) must permit access to SSH.

  • Linux VMs must use the old network interface naming, such as eth0, instead of ens192, enp1s0, and so on. For more information, see Ethernet Naming Conventions for RHEL, Oracle Linux, and Suse Linux.

  • Linux VMs must use DHCP. If the VMs use static IPs, use the AWS VM Import/Export transport mode instead.

  • Linux VMs must use GRUB (GRUB legacy) or GRUB 2 as the bootloader.

  • Linux VMs must use one of the following root file systems:

    • ext2

    • ext3

    • ext4

    • Btrfs

    • JFS

    • XFS

  • Linux VM /etc/fstab entries must use UUIDs instead of device names, because device names might change during the restore, replication, or conversion. For information about updating fstab entries to use UUIDs, see Updating fstab Entries to Use UUIDs in the Commvault knowledge base.

Disk Space

The C: drive must have 2 GiB or more of free space.

Process

The process that the Commvault software uses to perform restores, replications, and conversions with the Amazon Elastic Block Storage (EBS) direct APIs is as follows:

  1. Create empty Amazon EBS snapshots in the destination zone, region, or account using the ebs:StartSnapshot API.

  2. Write backup data retrieved from the Commvault storage library, and write to newly created Amazon EBS snapshot, using the ebs:PutSnapshotBlock API.

  3. Complete the Amazon EBS snapshots using the ebs:CompleteSnapshot API.

  4. Create Amazon EBS volumes from Amazon EBS snapshots.

  5. Once the volumes are created, create a Customizer node from 'Commvault Linux Injector Node' image, to inject the drivers on the restored volumes.

    commvault-customizer-node-for-restore-vm-VMName-job-id is the naming convention for the customizer node.

  6. Attach the restored EBS volumes to the customizer node and wait for 3-5 minutes to complete the customization.

    For more information on customization, see Installing Drivers Automatically for EBS Direct API Conversion.

  7. Create an instance based on the source configurations (such as boot mode, architecture, and memory) and attach the new Amazon EBS volumes.

    Note

    Based on the type of replication operation, the instance will either be created or reused.

    • For full replication, a new instance is created from the EBS volumes.

    • For incremental replication, the EBS volumes are attached to the existing destination instance.

  8. Delete the Amazon EBS snapshots created.

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