Understanding HCX Replicated Assisted vMotion (RAV)

HCX Replication Assisted vMotion (RAV) uses the HCX

along with replication and vMotion technologies to provide large-scale, parallel migrations with zero downtime.

HCX RAV provides the following benefits:

• Large-scale live mobility: Administrators can submit large sets of VMs for a live migration.

• Switchover window: With RAV, administrators can specify a switchover window.

• Continuous replication: Once a set of VMs is selected for migration, RAV does the initial syncing and continues to replicate the delta changes until the switchover window is reached.

• Concurrency: With RAV, multiple VMs are replicated simultaneously. When the replication phase reaches the switchover window, a delta vMotion cycle is initiated to do a quick, live switchover. Live switchover happens serially.

• Resiliency: RAV migrations are resilient to latency and varied network and service conditions during the initial sync and continuous replication sync.

• Switchover larger sets of VMs with a smaller maintenance window: Large chunks of data synchronization by way of replication allow for smaller delta vMotion cycles, paving the way for large numbers of VMs switching over in a maintenance window.

RAV Requirements and Restrictions; you can refer to this VMware document.

Procedure:

• Navigate to the HCX dashboard.

• Select the Services > Migration.

  • The Migrate Tracking window displays a summary of virtual machine migrations.

• Select Migrate Virtual Machines.

• Select the Remote Site Connection.

• From the Migration Profile, select Replicated-Assisted vMotion

• The list of virtual machines available for migration appears in the display.

• Select the virtual machines you want to migrate.

• Set the Transfer and Placement, Switchover, Interconnect Service Mesh, and Extended options.

  • To apply default settings for all selected virtual machines, use the green area of the interface at the top of the window.

  • To set machine-specific Transfer, Placement, Interconnect Service Mesh, and Switchover options, select a specific virtual machine and expand the entry.

• Click Validation to check in case there are any issues in the configuration before you click GO

Once you click on Go the migration is Initiated:

You can monitor the migration status from the same Migration page:

• Below are the different stages during the migration process, where the first Migration is Initiated 

• Next, Transfer sync starts and the switchover is started.

• Finally, the migration is completed, andthe same process starts for the remaining VM's

Also, the migration tasks can be monitored from vCenter:

You can also track the Events for the migration by expanding the VM from the same migration page and click on the show previous events to check on the list of events steps by step to understand the migration process:

Note:

You can schedule the migration date and time for Bulk, RAV, and OSAM migrations as part of the Switchover settings.