Rackware - Workload Migration (RMM) - Part 1

Migrating application and database servers from on-prem to cloud is really challenging. Current era organizations are focusing to stretch towards clouds to optimize their workloads.  This gives immense pressure on IT architects and administrators on how swiftly and smoothly they can migrate servers to the cloud.  

After the migration, the next challenge is to have an optimal DR strategy. The best practice would be replicating the servers to different regions.  There are many tools in the market to address these challenges,  

RMM is a great tool to address migrations and DR strategies.

Product Overview

RackWare Migration Manager (RMM) is a third-party application that we employ as a Cloud Migration and Disaster Recovery solution. RMM is compatible with all of the major cloud providers including Oracle, Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud, and can also be used in On-premise scenarios.

The product consists of following areas :

1. Discovery and Analysis
2. Workload Migration
3. Disaster Recovery and Backup

When organizations are planning to move their current VMware, Hyper-V, or Oracle VM to the cloud, RackWare is a really good solution to cater to this environment. This migration methodology in addressing migration at the VM level.

The following figures illustrate the RackWare Technology Support matrix:

At a high level, the RackWare CloudMotion process consists of:

1. Provisioning of the RackWare RMM instance.

2. Setup network ingress and egress rules allowing communication between source and target networks.

3. Initialize and license the RMM Server then start the RMM service.

4. Configuring SSH connectivity between source and the target server.

5. Create Cloud User and Policies

6. Create and configure a ‘Wave’ within the RackWare Admin UI. 

Note: If we are planning to use the same IP Address Subnets on the source and target networks we will require a bridge network.

The following is a link to RackWare documenation outlining the above process in greater detail.

Rackware RMM Migration Getting Started for Oracle  Marketplace | Hybrid Cloud Management Platform | Cloud Management Platform | RackWare

This figure illustrates how the RackWare Bridge provides the IP Aliasing.

Simplified diagram of the RRM to Bridge Server communication:

RackWare has different feature sets, unlocked via licensing options:

1. RackWare Migration Manager
2. RackWare Migration Manager (RMM) BYOL
3. RackWare Disaster Recovery (SMB)

As a partner, to obtain licensing for POC purposes we can email licensing@rackwareinc.com to obtain a 30 day trial license.

Deployment Scenarios

There are 3 ways to deploy the RMM software.

1. Install the software from yum package to RedHat Linux and derivative operating systems (eg Oracle Linux and CentOS).
2. Import image from OCI block storage

https://objectstorage.us-ashburn-1.oraclecloud.com/p/3ShJEeISW-IgvrynXI1BMYUVNMc-4R2o8kaVcvI7S8T4MDE7-LQAXvw2ZNAxcRA1/n/rworacleuniversal/b/rackware-mkt-storage/o/RMM-7_4_0_307-base

  3. Provisioning from an OCI Marketplace image

In this article, we covered only product overview and deployment methods. Next article we will cover the installation and configuration part of the RMM server.