Discover, collect, and assess VMware VMs for migration

Learn how to download the Migration Center discovery client CLI and use it to remotely discover, collect, and assess virtual machine (VM) instances running on VMware for migration and containerization.

You can generate offline assessment reports in a user-friendly HTML format. These reports display the results for each of the migration targets and outlines actions to take to eliminate blockers and risks.

Before you begin

  1. Provision a Linux machine to download and run the mcdc CLI. The Linux machine must have the following minimum requirements:

    • glibc version 2.25 or later
    • 4 GB RAM and 10 GB disk space
    • Network connectivity to vCenter and ESX hosts

  2. Ensure that you have a vSphere user with the following permissions:

    • Read privileges to VMs
    • Read privileges to all the ESX hosts
    • Guest operation modifications
    • Guest operation program execution
    • Guest operation queries

  3. Ensure that you have a user with administrator or root rights to all the target guest VMs.

Download mcdc CLI

  1. Connect to the Linux machine:

    ssh MACHINE_IP

    Replace MACHINE_IP with the IP address of your Linux machine.

  2. Download the latest version of the mcdc CLI and make it executable:

    curl -O "https://mcdc-release.storage.googleapis.com/$(curl -s https://mcdc-release.storage.googleapis.com/latest)/mcdc"
chmod +x mcdc

Perform VMware inventory discovery

  • Run the inventory discovery:

    ./mcdc discover vsphere -u USERNAME --url https://VSPHERE_URL

    Replace the following:

    • USERNAME: your vCenter username
    • VSPHERE_URL: the URL for your vCenter Server instance or the vSphere Client

    The output of the discover command looks like the following:

    [+] Found 13 VMs
Collecting data...
13 / 13 [---------------------------------------------------] 100.00% 5 p/s
[✓] Collection completed.

Perform guest discovery on all discovered VMs

  • Run the guest discovery:

    ./mcdc discover vsphere guest all --url https://VSPHERE_URL \
  -u VCENTER_USER --vm-user VM_USER

    Replace the following:

    • VCENTER_USER: the vCenter server user
    • VM_USER: the VM user

    When prompted, enter the password for the VCENTER_USER and VM_USER.

Generate reports to visualize the assessment

  • Generate a summary report:

    ./mcdc report --format html > Summary_Report.html

  • Generate a detailed report:

    ./mcdc report --format html --full > Detailed_Report.html

    HTML files named Summary_Report.html and Detailed_Report.html are created. Open the reports in a browser.

Clean up

There are no charges associated with running the mcdc CLI. However, you can delete the collected data from the local database.

  • Delete the mcdc CLI data:

    ./mcdc discover purge-db -db DATABASE_NAME

    Replace DATABASE_NAME with the path to the database where the collected data is stored. Typically, it is in the same directory where you downloaded the mcdc CLI.

What's next