DBT – Digital Box Technologies ·
Start with an inventory. List every virtual machine with its operating system, disks, criticality and dependencies. Identify applications sensitive to virtual hardware changes, such as software licensed to a MAC address.
Size the target. Storage drives everything: existing shared array, or Ceph distributed storage on at least three nodes. Plan a dedicated network for storage and replication.
Migrate in waves. Non-critical machines first, to validate the procedure and drivers, then business services in agreed windows. Every wave has its rollback plan.
Finally, plan for operations: backup, monitoring, patch management and team training. That is what turns a successful migration into a platform you control over time.
Assess dependencies before budgeting
A VM list is not enough. Assign each workload a business owner, criticality and upstream and downstream dependencies. Record application licensing constraints, special devices and VMware-specific features. An application that is unsupported on the target can justify temporarily retaining part of the existing environment.
Compare the full operating cost
For an organisation in Morocco, compare like-for-like scenarios: hardware, storage, networking, support subscriptions, backups, migration time and training. Reducing one licensing line does not establish an overall saving. Access to assistance and the ability to maintain the platform belong in the decision.
Write acceptance and rollback criteria
Choose a representative but non-critical workload for the pilot. Validate boot, authentication, business processing, inbound and outbound traffic, then a backup restore. Measure the time required rather than deriving the cutover window from disk size alone. Decide who approves the migration, when the decision is made and which checks it depends on.
Prepare for ongoing operations
The rollback procedure must identify the authoritative copy and how to handle data written after cutover. Avoid bringing two competing instances of the same application online. Update inventory, monitoring instructions and access procedures after acceptance. Before retiring old hosts, confirm acceptance criteria and the availability of required backups.