How Do I Migrate from On-premises VMware Cloud Director to VMware Cloud Director service

You can use the VMware Cloud Director service API to migrate your on-premises VMware Cloud Director installation to VMware Cloud Director service.

Prerequisites

  • To be able to check the compatibility between your on-premises VMware Cloud Director environment and VMware Cloud Director service, verify that the load balancer that is in front of your on-premises installation is publicly accessible.
  • Verify that you have set up your VMware Cloud account. See Before You Begin with VMware Cloud Director service.
  • Verify that you have activated VMware Cloud Director service and that you completed setting it up.
  • Verify that you have access to VMware Cloud Director service environments.
    1. Log in to the VMware Cloud Director service console.
    2. Click Cloud Director Instances.
    3. Click Create Instance.
    4. In the Select an environment drop-down menu, view the environments available to you, make note of the one that is nearest to your on-premises environment, and cancel the instance creation wizard.
  • Reach out to VMware support to verify that your VMware Cloud organization supports the migration. See How Do I Report a Problem.
  • Generate a VMware Cloud API token and save the token credentials. The scope of the token must contains the Administrator and NSX Cloud Admin service roles, as well as the Developer or the Organization Owner organization role. Exchange the API for an access bearer token to use in the Authorization header when you run API calls. See How Do I Generate an API Token.
  • If you are using RabbitMQ, LDAP or similar solutions, verify that they are accessible from VMware Cloud Director service.
  • Verify that migration is supported for the VMware Cloud Director configuration that you are using. See Limitations to VMware Cloud Director to VMware Cloud Director service migration.
  • Verify that your on-premises configuration matches the scale maximums supported by VMware Cloud Director service. See Configuration Maximums for VMware Cloud Director Service.

Procedure

  1. Verify that your on-premises VMware Cloud Director installation and VMware Cloud Director service are compatible. See Check the Compatibility Between an On-premises VMware Cloud Director Installation and VMware Cloud Director service.
  2. Retrieve the database dump and the responses.properties file from your on-premises VMware Cloud Director installation. See Retrieve the Database Resources from Your On-premises VMware Cloud Director Installation.
  3. Upload the on-premises resources to the cloud environment that is nearest to your on-premises infrastructure resources. See Upload On-premises VMware Cloud Director Resources to Your Cloud Environment.
  4. Run the /cell-management-tool cell -m true -u command to put the on-premises VMware Cloud Director cells in maintenance mode. For more details, see Managing a Cell.
  5. Create a VMware Cloud Director instance in your cloud environment by using the on-premises resources that you uploaded. See Create a VMware Cloud Director Instance by Using On-premises Resources.
  6. Associate your VMware Cloud Director instance with your on-premises SDDC via proxy. See Associate a VMware Cloud Director Instance with an SDDC via VMware Reverse Proxy.
  7. (Optional) If you want to use the same URL that you used for your on-premises installation, customize the DNS settings for your VMware Cloud Director instance. See How Do I Customize the DNS and Certificate Settings of VMware Cloud Director Instance.