One of the defining features of the Nutanix platform is simplicity.  Innovations like the Prism interface for infrastructure management and One-Click Upgrades for both the Nutanix software-defined storage platform and supported hypervisors have lowered the management burden of on-premises infrastructure.

Nutanix is now looking to bring that same level of simplicity to migrating virtual machines to a new hypervisor.  Nutanix has released a new tool today called Xtract for VM.  This tool, which is free to all Nutanix customers, brings the same one-click simplicity that Nutanix is known for to migrating workloads from ESXi to AHV.

So how does Xtract for VM differentiate from other migration tools?  First, it is an agentless migration tool.  Xtract will communicate with vCenter to get a list of VMs that are in the ESXi infrastructure, and it will build a migration plan and synchronize the VM data from ESXi to AHV.

During data synchronization and migration, Xtract will insert the AHV device drivers into the virtual machine.  It will also capture and preserve the network configuration, so the VM will not lose connectivity or require administrator intervention after the migration is complete.

By injecting the AHV drivers and preserving the network configuration during the data synchronization and cutover, Xtract is able to perform cross-hypervisor migrations with minimal downtime.  And since the original VM is not touched during the migration, rollback is as easy as shutting down the AHV VM and powering the ESXi VM back on, which significantly reduces the risk of cross-hypervisor migrations.

Analysis

The datacenter is clearly changing, and we now live in a multi-hypervisor world.  While many customers will still run VMware for their on-premises environments, there are many that are looking to reduce their spend on hypervisor products.  Xtract for VMs provides a tool to help reduce that cost while providing the simplicity that Nutanix is known for.

While Xtract is currently version 1.0, I can see this technology be a pivotal for helping customers move workloads between on-premises and cloud infrastructures.

To learn more about this new tool, you can check out the Xtract for VMs page on Nutanix’s webpage.