Now a days there is a lot of demand for AWS and of course it
is easy to adopt AWS services like EC2, S3, etc., but not all the time we may
able to deploy new instances and install applications, there may be some scenarios
where we may need to migrate complete VM from physical datacenter to AWS. So
here we will discuss about how we can do cold migration of VM to AWS.
VM Import/Export enables us to import virtual machine (VM)
images from our existing virtualization environment to Amazon EC2, and then deploy
new instance using same AMI, this will enable us to copy our VM
image catalog to Amazon EC2, or create a repository of VM images for backup and
disaster recovery.
Below Software’s /applications will be used to complete this
cold migration:
- VMware Workstation
- Ovftool
Step 1: Setup a VM
Install a windows 2012 r2 server
using VMWare Workstation using the windows 2012 r2 ISO.
Step 2: Exporting the VM
We need to export this VM as OVA file or VMDK,
VHD OR RAW. So, power off the VM and
Go to -> File -> Export to OVF.
Now the VM is exported in the format of OVF.
Step 3: Conversion of OVF to OVA
The OVF file should be converted to OVA file to
import the VM in AWS. VMware player helps to convert OVF to OVA,
After installation of ovftool, run the below commands
cd "Program Files\VMware\VMware
OVF Tool"
ovftool.exe H:\Image\Windows-2012-Server.ovf
H:\Image\Windows-2012-Server.ova (This command converts from .ovf to .ova)
Now the VM is successfully converted from OVF to
OVA.
Step 4: Exporting OVA to
S3
For exporting this OVA to S3, we need to have a
user and an IAM role in AWS.
And also install AWS CLI for 64bit.
After installing AWS CLI, run the commands using
command prompt.
aws configure (Give the access key , secret key
and region)
aws s3 ls
aws s3 cp Windows-2012-Server.ova
s3://migratebucket/ (Cpoying the ova file to s3 bucket)
aws s3 ls s3://migratebucket/ (To view the
uploaded ova in s3)
Step 5: Importing OVA
To import OVA as an image, there are few steps
that needed to be followed.
1. Open
a notepad and type the below commands and save it as trust-policy.json
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Principal": { "Service": "vmie.amazonaws.com" },
"Action": "sts:AssumeRole",
"Condition": {
"StringEquals":{
"sts:Externalid": "vmimport"
}
}
}
]
}
As an aws user, run the command
aws iam create-role --role-name vmimport
--assume-role-policy-document file://trust-policy.json (Need to go the path
where the trust-policy.json is saved)
2. Type the below commands in a notepad
and name it as role-policy.json
{
"Version": "2012-10-17",
"Statement": [
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": [
"s3:ListBucket",
"s3:GetBucketLocation"
],
"Resource": [
"arn:aws:s3:::disk-image-file-bucket"
]
},
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action": [
"s3:GetObject"
],
"Resource": [
"arn:aws:s3:::disk-image-file-bucket/*"
]
},
{
"Effect": "Allow",
"Action":[
"ec2:ModifySnapshotAttribute",
"ec2:CopySnapshot",
"ec2:RegisterImage",
"ec2:Describe*"
],
"Resource": "*"
}
]
}
disk-image-file-bucket
-> implies the bucket name
Now run the command
aws iam put-role-policy --role-name vmimport --policy-name vmimport --policy-document file://role-policy.json
3. Finally
importing the VM- Open a notepad and type the below commands and save this
fie as containers.json file.
[
{
"Description":
"Windows 2008 OVA",
"Format": "ova",
"UserBucket": {
"S3Bucket": "my-import-bucket",
"S3Key": "vms/my-windows-2008-vm.ova"
}
}]
S3Bucket -> It indicates the bucket name
S3Key -> It is the path of the ova file in S3 (Make this file public
and copy that location).
aws ec2
import-image --description "Windows 2012 OVA" --disk-containers
file://containers.json
(This command imports the image in reference with containers.json file).
The
ova is imported and it is pending state.
Step 6:
Check the Import task
To check the status of the
Import,
aws ec2 describe-import-image-tasks --import-task-ids
import-ami-ffrnccwy
(we get the AMI id from import task id
from the containers.json policy)
After
multiple checks, the status of the import shows "Completed"
Finally,
the AMI is created in AWS and now that we have an AMI, we can launch it as an
instance or copy it to another region.
Step 7: Verifying the VM Imported as AMI.
Launch an instance using the AMI (Image of the VM) which is
created in our AWS EC2 environment. Connect to the instance using Remote
desktop connection and give the password which we have set it during the
installation of the VM in VMware workstation.
Hence, the VM is imported successfully with the migration of
the applications 😊
Note: This process will help us to perform VM cold migration, if somebody want to perform physical server, then process would remain same apart from converting Physical to VM, In future post will convert how to convert physical machine to VM.
Hope this post will help you.
