Migration from Windows ZVM to Virtual Appliance

That’s scary, I was planning to attempt this week…

Hello, Migration of 2 ZVM windows 9.7u3 to ZVMA10U1, done this week.

– Your ZVM must have only 1 Nic (We had to delete 3, we used to have 4)

– Had an external DB, migration tool needed to work with a SQL DB name zvm_db or it just failed to migrate with other name we had.

– Had to edit storage_properties.xml with IP of the SQL, the entries related to SQL DB name with zvm_db

Support helped us a lot.

A new version of migration tool is on the way it seems.

Hope this will helps. Sorry for my poor english.

We had to have support migrate the whole thing for us.  There were some random things in the ZVM database that prevented us from doing it on our own.  I will say that I am pretty unhappy with v10 and the support around it.  We have opened more tickets since going to v10 than since we started with every version since v4.5.  v10 documentation and support is not great, bordering on non-existent or junk.  They constantly want to have a webex even though I can provide them the exact same thing when I open the ticket.  Their main level of support is to send me a page from the manual that may or may not be wrong but I have already read it.  I should have stayed on 9.7.

I lost all my replicated data after an issue with one of my hosts in my recovery site. Support provided minimum help or showed the level of concern required, as I now have NO DR in place. They left me with zombied data, but recommend a product to identify the zombied data that they do not support. I don’t know if it is HPE mucking up the once clear waters or what the issue is behind the scenes, but I’ve been a customer for many years and I do not like what I am seeing with this solution. We’ve been asking for an appliance now for years. We finally get one, and the migration routine is obviously not ready for prime time. I was going to upgrade, but not now. Now, the search is on for a replacement, but who? I’m not aware of who can match their RPO/RTO times but if you’ve just lost all your replicated data, even a 60 minute snapshot (Think Nutanix) is better than this.

The solution support just gave me to fix an issue was use API commands from pre-version 9 even though I am on 10.  Something has happened and if it is HPE screwing it up, they are making a huge mistake.

We want to upgrade and migrate as well, unfortunately we are stuck at deploying the initial ZVM appliance V10.1.
Version: zvml-build-lagavulin_u1p1-10.0.11.159.ovf

After deploying and starting up, the webinterface is not being loaded. However you can login into the console using zadmin, at which you must change the password. After logging into the console it gets ‘please wait while system is initializing’ and it is stuck at this screen for hours.

The upgrade from 9.0 to 9.5 and to 9.7 were seamless for us (windows). Version 10 appliance seem to have caused some troubles with Zerto/HpE.

Case: 00236909

It took weeks for us to successfully migrate our 9.7 windows instance with external db to the appliance. It took multiple migration tool and appliance patches for it to finally work, and we acted a guinea pigs for the support team to get through the process. Front line support does not know basic linux commands, and keycloak is basically a mystery, on the support side and quality of documentation.  I’m still nervous about doing any other instance, and I think we will be on 9.7 for a couple more months on our other instances.  They rushed this out the door for no reason and should have let it bake till next year.