[Server Migration] Alibaba Cloud Server Migration Center [Migration]

This is Ohara from the technical sales department.

This time, I will write about
Server Migration Center (SMC) provided by Alibaba Cloud (Information as of January 2022)

Overview and features of Server Migration Center (SMC)

Server Migration Center (SMC) is a server migration platform developed by Alibaba Cloud that allows you to migrate one or more source servers to Alibaba Cloud. The migration source server can be a server in a data center, a virtual machine, or a host on another cloud platform.

SMC also supports automatic data migration from the source server to Alibaba Cloud. SMC provides the following features:

Incremental data migration

○ Incremental data from the source server can be synchronized to AlibabaCloud without service interruption.
*Reference: Migrate incremental data from a source server

Migrate multiple servers at once

○ You can start multiple migration tasks at once in the SMC console.
○ You can call API operations in the SMC to create and start migration tasks, query migration progress, and manage multiple migration tasks at once.
*Reference: API operations

Multi-threaded data transmission

○ The SMC client supports multi-threaded data transmission. This feature improves bandwidth utilization and transmission efficiency when high bandwidth is available.
*Reference: Enable multi-threaded transfer acceleration

Centralized monitoring of task processes

○ If you migrate multiple source servers to Alibaba Cloud at one time, SMC can monitor the migration status of each source server.
○ You can check the status of each source server or migration task in the SMC console. This allows you to identify any issues that may occur during migration.

Advantages of Server Migration Center (SMC)

Migration from diverse platforms and infrastructure environments

○ SMC allows you to migrate servers running different versions of Windows and Linux operating systems.
* Reference: Limits
○ SMC can migrate data from data centers/on-premises virtual machines (VMs)/cloud platform servers to Alibaba Cloud.
・Supported VMs: VMware / VirtualBox / Xen / KVM / Hyper-V
・Supported cloud platforms: Amazon Web Services (AWS) / Microsoft Azure / Google Cloud Platform (GCP) / Tencent Cloud / UCloud / China Telecom e- Cloud/QingCloud

Independence from the underlying environment of the source server

○ Supports physical to cloud (P2C)/virtual to cloud (V2C)/cloud to cloud (C2C) type migrations and multiple types of file systems and disks.
○ Non-disruptive migration, so there is no need to stop services running on the source server.
○ It is a lightweight client that requires no installation, so it offers multiple migration methods and you can choose the one that suits your needs. Additionally, once you start a migration task, the SMC manages the entire migration progress.
○ By default, 2048-bit RSA keys are used to encrypt data during data transmission, ensuring secure data transmission. SMC allows you to migrate servers over private networks, such as VPN gateways or physical connections provided by Alibaba Cloud Express Connect.

Server Migration Center (SMC) migration process

SMC consists of an SMC client and an SMC console. The following diagram shows how to use SMC for migration.

*Reference: Migration process

summary

The server migration destination will be limited to Alibaba Cloud, but there seems to be no migration tool that is as versatile as this at the moment, so if you have the opportunity to migrate, please try it.