OS Assisted Migration: the VCF Operations HCX service that brings Linux and Windows guests over to vSphere from non-vSphere hypervisors like KVM and Hyper-V. Each guest gets the Sentinel agent and each site gets Sentinel appliances; at switchover the copy is adjusted and restarted, so the move is not outage-free.
Also called OS Assisted Migration.
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Terms in this definition
- VCF Operations HCX
Add-on licensed for moving workloads inside and between VCF private clouds and linking those environments, offering bulk or live migration plus network extension so IP addresses can stay the same.
- LAMP
Short for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP (Perl and Python also fill the P): a widely used open-source stack for web applications whose database is frequently Azure Database for MySQL.
- OVER
Gives a T-SQL window function its window: PARTITION BY, ORDER BY and, if wanted, a ROWS or RANGE frame. Rankings and running totals can then be worked out while every row is kept.
- vSphere
VMware's platform for virtualisation, made up of vCenter and ESX hosts, supplying compute for VCF clusters.
- LIKE
Compares strings with a pattern that can contain the % and _ wildcards. Because it only understands character patterns, searching big volumes of text this way is much slower than using full-text search.
- KVM
A hypervisor outside the vSphere family. Workloads on it, or on Hyper-V, can be moved by VCF Operations HCX through OS Assisted Migration, with a Sentinel agent installed in each guest.
- Hyper-V
The hypervisor built into Windows. The VMs for the Azure Extended Network appliance require the Hyper-V role, using nested virtualisation, and an external virtual switch for each NIC.
- Agent
A specialised form of Microsoft Copilot set up for one particular job, pairing instructions with knowledge and skills. You can create one in Copilot Studio, SharePoint or Agent Builder, and administrators control them from the Microsoft 365 admin center.
Related terms
- SDR
Sentinel Data Receiver. In multi-site OS Assisted Migration with HCX, this destination-side appliance takes in the replicated guest data forwarded by the Sentinel Gateway and looks after it.
- SGW
Sentinel Gateway. With multi-site OS Assisted Migration, HCX places this appliance at the source; guests running Sentinel connect to it, and it relays what they send on to the Sentinel Data Receiver.
- Site pairing
Connecting HCX at a source site to HCX at a destination. Pairs can be one-way, where the source initiates everything, or two-way, sharing a service mesh so either side starts migrations; KVM, Hyper-V and other non-vSphere sites join as pseudo-sites for OS Assisted Migration.
- SRG
Single-site OS Assisted Migration appliance: when HCX pairs a non-vSphere environment such as Hyper-V or KVM directly with vSphere, guests running Sentinel replicate to this appliance on the vSphere side.