# VM Conversion Using EBS Direct APIs

You can convert a VMware, Azure, or Hyper-V VM to an Amazon EC2 instance using the EBS direct APIs.

For Amazon EBS volumes that were created from Amazon EBS snapshots, the storage blocks must be pulled down 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 performance is achieved after all blocks have been downloaded and written to the Amazon EBS volume.

Note

- Commvault supports the automatic injection of Amazon Paravirtual (Xen), NVMe, and Enhanced Networking (ENA) drivers on the source VMs. For more information, see Installing Drivers Automatically for EBS Direct API Conversion.

- For SUSE, you must manually install the required drivers before the conversion process. For more information, see Preparing the Source VM for Conversion to an Amazon EC2 Instance.

## Requirements

### Windows Source VMs

- Configure your host firewall (Windows firewall or similar) to allow access to Remote Desktop Protocol (RDP) and Network discovery. Otherwise, you cannot access your Amazon EC2 instance after the conversion is complete.

- Enable RDP.

### Linux Source VMs

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

- Enable Secure Shell (SSH) for remote access.

- The host firewall (such as Linux iptables) must permit access to SSH.

- Verify that Linux VMs use GRUB (GRUB legacy) or GRUB 2 as the bootloader.

- Linux VMs must use one of the following for the root file system: ext2, ext3, ext4, Btrfs, JFS, or XFS.

- Linux VM /etc/fstab entries should use UUIDs instead of device names, because device names might change during replication. For information about updating fstab entries to use UUIDs, see Updating fstab Entries to Use UUIDs.

Note

When converting the Linux source VM to AWS, you must use DHCP. If the source VMs use static IPs, use the AWS VM Import/Export transport mode instead. See, VM Conversion Using the AWS VM Import/Export Transport Mode.

### Disk Space Requirements

- Verify that there is a minimum of 2 GB free space on the C: drive.

## Supported Operating Systems

### Linux

UEFI | BIOS
--- | ---
Alma Linux 8.4 Alma Linux 9.6 Amazon Linux 2.x CentOS 9.x Oracle Linux 7.x Oracle Linux 9.x Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.x Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.x Rocky Linux 8.x Rocky Linux 9.x Ubuntu 18.04 Ubuntu 22.04 Ubuntu 24.04 | CentOS 7.x Oracle Linux 7.8 Oracle Linux 8.6 Oracle Linux 9.x Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 7.x Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 8.x Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 9.x Rocky Linux 8.x Rocky Linux 9.x Ubuntu 18.04 Ubuntu 22.04 Ubuntu 24.04

Note

AmazonSSMAgent is not supported for the following Linux systems:

- Oracle 8 UEFI

- Redhat 8 UEFI

- Redhat 8 BIOS

### Windows

BIOS and UEFI

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

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

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

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

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

## Supported Volume and File System Types

The MBR and GPT formatted Amazon EBS volumes are supported for both OS and data Amazon EBS volumes for both Windows and Linux operating systems.

Windows

Amazon EC2 Instances with Amazon EBS volumes that use Master Boot Record (MBR) and GUID Partition Table (GPT) partitioning are supported.

Linux

You can convert Linux VMs that use one of the following for the root file system: ext2, ext3, ext4, Btrfs, JFS, or XFS.

## Configuring Source VMs for EBS Direct Write

When performing conversion for an Active Directory domain controller, upgrade the PV drivers as described in Upgrade a Domain Controller (AWS PV Upgrade).

## EBS Direct Write Process

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.

## Related Topics

- Initialize Amazon EBS Volumes

- For information about automatically installing drivers, see Installing Drivers Automatically for EBS Direct API Conversion.

- For information about installing drivers manually, see Preparing the Source VM for Conversion to an Amazon EC2 Instance.

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