Optimization and Operations Technical Guide After Migrating from VMware to Enterprise Cloud Platforms

Currently, there are four mainstream approaches for migrating business from VMware virtual machines to new infrastructure platforms: enterprise cloud, virtualization, hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), and container cloud platforms. As customer businesses increasingly embrace the internet, many solutions require growing elastic capabilities – precisely what enterprise cloud platforms can provide.

The market’s mainstream options for migrating from VMware to enterprise cloud platforms include AWS/GCP/Azure/Alibaba Cloud/ZStack Cloud.

However, migrating from VMware virtual machines to enterprise cloud platforms is a complex engineering task requiring meticulous planning and attention to numerous technical details to ensure seamless, reliable migration and business continuity. Furthermore, how to optimize systems and what operational considerations exist post-migration are key concerns for infrastructure operations teams.

Below are optimization and operational technical details to focus on after migrating from VMware virtual machines to enterprise cloud platforms to achieve exceptional performance and efficient management:

In-Depth Post-Migration Validation and Continuous Monitoring

After completing the migration from VMware virtual machines to an enterprise cloud platform, conducting thorough application performance monitoring and business validation for a period (e.g., days to weeks) is crucial. This includes ensuring all business functions operate normally with expected performance. Simultaneously, closely monitor the enterprise cloud platform’s health status, including control nodes, compute nodes, storage clusters, and network performance.

ZStack Cloud as a productized Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) software, provides a unified platform to manage data center compute, network and storage resources. ZStack ZCenter cloud management platform focuses on unified management of ZStack products, offering enterprises one-stop cloud resource management and services. Additionally, ZStack CMP supports heterogeneous resource integration through advanced monitoring dashboards, facilitating full lifecycle management and ensuring platform stability.

Efficient Resource Planning and Optimization Strategies

Based on target enterprise cloud platform monitoring data, continuously adjusting virtual machine (VM) resource allocations (CPU and memory) is key to optimizing resource utilization. Optimizing storage strategies – such as placing disks with different performance tiers on different storage backends – can significantly improve overall efficiency.

ZStack Cloud supports lightweight deployment (completed within 30 minutes), manages heterogeneous virtualization, features elastic bare metal capabilities, and supports heterogeneous CPU/GPU with AI computing power. It widely covers application scenarios including private/hybrid cloud, heterogeneous platform management, and multi-region management.

ZStack Software-Defined Storage (SDS) is a leading distributed software-defined storage product with outstanding performance, reliability, and manageability, helping large enterprises and operators build PB-scale storage resource pools.

Modernizing Operations Processes and Team Enablement

Post-migration, updating operations manuals, monitoring alert rules and backup strategies is essential. Fully leverage the new enterprise cloud platform’s backup mechanisms or integrate third-party backup software. ZStack provides comprehensive resources including product documentation, product videos, product downloads and compatibility lists as detailed references for operations teams. To ensure teams can effectively manage the new platform, training them on the enterprise cloud platform’s management tools, APIs and troubleshooting methods is critical. ZStack is committed to providing training and certification to educate partners and relevant personnel on cloud technologies and cultivate cloud computing talent. Additionally, establishing new change management, incident management and problem management processes will help standardize future operations. ZStack CMP supports workflow approvals and automated operations, enabling more efficient process management.

Comprehensive Cost Analysis and Continuous Savings

After migrating from VMware virtual machines to an enterprise cloud platform, establishing a cost model for the new environment (including hardware depreciation, software licensing, power consumption and operational labor costs) forms the basis for cost analysis. Comparing total cost of ownership (TCO) pre- and post-migration provides clearer return on investment (ROI) analysis. Continuous resource usage optimization is an effective way to control costs. Notably, ZStack’s VMware to ZStack solution has successfully helped over 600 enterprise customers significantly reduce costs. For example, through VMware to ZStack migration paths, enterprises can achieve up to 50% TCO reduction. ZStack Cloud and ZStack ZSphere both offer free trials, allowing enterprises more flexible cost evaluation and control during initial stages.

ZStack: Let Every Company Have Its Own Cloud

As a cloud infrastructure software provider, ZStack is committed to empowering every company to have its own cloud through innovative cloud platform products and solutions. ZStack’s extensive product line includes ZStack Cloud Platform for building private clouds, ZStack ZSphere delivering VMware-consistent virtualization experiences, and robust hyperconverged infrastructure (ZStack HCI). For software-defined storage, ZStack offers PB-scale storage resource pools through ZStack Software-Defined Storage (SDS), including ZStack Ceph Enterprise and ZStack High Performance Storage. Additionally, ZStack provides ZStack ZCenter data center management platform, ZStack CMP multi-cloud management platform, ZStack Edge for edge orchestration, ZStack Zaku cloud-native platform, ZStack RDS database management (supporting 10+ database services including MySQL and Oracle), and ZStack AIOS private AI infrastructure platform for enterprise AI applications.

ZStack solutions are widely adopted across ten industries: education, energy, manufacturing, internet, finance, telecommunications, healthcare, broadcasting, highways and government. ZStack’s advantages lie in its “4S” characteristics: Simple – easy installation/deployment, simple operations and user-friendly interfaces; Strong – robust architecture supporting high availability between VMs and management nodes, handling high-concurrency API requests and self-recovery after power failures; Scalable – supporting 1-10,000 hosts per node with flexible expansion capabilities and open APIs compatible with multiple systems; Smart – supporting automated operations, intelligent online upgrades, smart UI interactions and real-time monitoring/auditing. Currently, ZStack serves over 30 countries/regions globally and has earned the trust of 4,000+ leading enterprises.

FAQ

Q: After migrating from VMware virtual machines to an enterprise cloud platform, how to ensure data security and business continuity?
A: ZStack provides comprehensive solutions ensuring data security and business continuity. For example, ZStack’s disaster recovery solution supports six scenarios through technologies like snapshots, block data replication, CDP (Continuous Data Protection), backup, disaster recovery and active-active configurations. ZStack’s VM security solution offers complete security and operational capabilities including anti-virus protection and access control. ZStack’s active-active data center solution also supports cross-data center VM high availability, integrating SAN, SDS and public cloud storage mounting solutions to ensure data security and flexibility.

Q: What are common challenges when migrating from VMware to enterprise cloud platforms, and how does ZStack help?
A: Common challenges include complex technical details, business interruption risks and potential cost increases. ZStack provides professional VMware to ZStack solutions covering four migration paths: server virtualization, private cloud, hyperconvergence and container cloud. These have successfully helped over 1,000 enterprise customers transition from VMware, significantly reducing costs. ZStack also offers complete documentation, product videos and professional technical support services to help users successfully complete migrations and address challenges.

Q: How to effectively manage resources and optimize performance after migrating from VMware to enterprise cloud platforms?
A: Post-migration, adjust VM resource allocations (CPU, memory) based on new platform monitoring data and optimize storage strategies (e.g., placing disks with different performance requirements on different storage backends). ZStack Cloud platform provides unified compute, network and storage resource management, supporting intelligent unified operations and V2V migration.

Q: How does ZStack help enterprises control and optimize costs after VMware-to-enterprise cloud migration?
A: ZStack’s VMware to ZStack solution has helped numerous customers significantly reduce operational costs. Through ZStack Cloud’s flexible deployment options (including free trials), enterprises can more economically launch and scale cloud environments. ZStack’s product design emphasizes automated operations and intelligent management, reducing labor costs while providing detailed resource usage monitoring for continuous spending optimization.

Q: What solutions does ZStack offer for hybrid cloud adoption when migrating from VMware to enterprise cloud platforms?
A: ZStack provides native hybrid cloud solutions, particularly deep integration with Alibaba Cloud enabling unified management of on-premise VMs and Alibaba Cloud ECS. Additionally, through VPN and dedicated line access, ZStack supports hybrid cloud solutions with other public clouds, meeting diverse enterprise hybrid cloud needs.