General Requirements

Agent Requirement

After setting up the environment and replication settings, you can install the Migration agent in your source machines.

The following sections provide an overview of the installation process, identify the installation requirements, provide step-by-step instructions for agent installation, detail troubleshooting steps for potential agent installation errors, and provide guidelines on how to upgrade and uninstall the agents.

Process and Requirements

The migration agent must be installed in the source machine to replicate the source machine to target cloud in two phases. Initial Mirror and Change Copy the data is replicated to the target.

During the Initial Mirror, the disks attached to the source machine are read block by block and transmitted to the target infrastructure.
During the Change Copy, the blocks that have changed since the Initial Mirror began, will be transmitted to the target infrastructure. In both phases the data is copied to the target Staging area.

Compression and Encryption features are built into the migration agent, so that the data sent over the network is safe and secure. When it lands in the target infrastructure the data is decrypted and decompressed.

One license allows one migration agent to be installed on a Source machine. A license is consumed when an Agent is installed and running on a machine.

The unique ID defines the Source machine. IBM Live Migration Service determines this ID in the following ways:

If a metadata server is available in the cloud environment, the machine is defined by the unique ID of the metadata server along with its IBM Live Migration Service Account.
If a metadata server is not accessible, the machine is identified by its unique MAC address along with its IBM Live Migration Service Account.

When an agent is installed on a source machine, it collects the following information of the machine:

Host name and ID
RAM size and number of cores
Hardware and OS information
Number of disks and their sizes
- in Windows - disk letters
- in Linux - block device names

See below the information collected and displayed about the source machine.

NoteYou can view the collected information on the User Console, in Machines(Click on individual machine name)> Machine Details >SOURCE.

Process and Requirements

An installer file is used to install the migration agent in the source machine from the IBM Live Migration Service console. For windows and Linux platforms separate migration agent files exist. The installation procedure is fast and requires no reboot or downtime at source. The installation token or IBM Live Migration Service user credentials must be entered during the installation.It also prompts you to select the disks which need to be replicated.

The root disk of the source server cannot be omitted from the replication server because the machine must be launched in the target infrastructure. All disk partitions are by default replicated to the target. Once the menu prompts are given, the installation is initiated. Once the installation is completed, the data replication starts automatically which can be monitored in the IBM Live Migration Service console. The agent installation can also be performed through a silent install, command line arguments and installation without starting data replication.

NoteIf you attempt to install an agent on a machine where it is already installed, the IBM Live Migration Service Manager will install the new agent and will not re-use the existing one.

Installation Requirements

Before starting the installation of the migration agent on the source machine verify whether the common prerequisites are met. The unique source machine ID is calculated based on the machine’s MAC address. If the MAC address is changed after agent installation, then the agent must be reinstalled and the replication will be restarted from scratch. Also, the target operating system should be a supported one in the target cloud for the agent to function properly.

Installation Requirements for Source Machines

The source machine requirements depend on the operating system - Linux or Windows.

Linux Machines

The following items must be verified before installing an agent in a Linux machine.

At least 1 GB of free disk on the root directory (/) of your source machine.
Python 2 (2.4 or above) or Python 3 (3.0 or above) is installed in the source machine.
Ensure /tmp is mounted as read+write and it has atleast 50MB of free space
The active bootloader software is GRUB 1 or 2.
Verify that the /tmp directory is mounted with exec option so that scripts and applications can be run.
The IBM Live Migration Service user must either be a root user or a user in the sudoers list.
Ensure the dhclient package is installed. If not, please install the package. (run yum install dhclient in CMD)
The kernel header version number should be exactly identical with the kernel version number.
Verify that the folder containing the kernel development/ Linux headers is not a symbolic link. If a symbolic link exists, delete the symbolic link.
Install the correct kernel-devel/linux-headers from the repositories. To install the correct kernel-devel/linux-headers, run the following command: On RHEL/CENTOS/Oracle/SUSE: sudo yum install kernel-devel-uname -r On Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install linux-headers-uname -r To install the correct kernel-devel/linux-headers, run the following command: On RHEL/CENTOS/Oracle/SUSE: sudo yum install kernel-devel-uname -r On Debian/Ubuntu: sudo apt-get install linux-headers-uname -r

Windows Machines

For Windows machines please verify the following:

(For replicating machines to AWS cloud only) - .NET Framework version 4.5 or above is installed on machines running Windows Server 2008 R2 or higher. .NET Framework version 3.5 or above on machines running Windows Server 2008 or lower.
If Windows 2003 SP2 or Windows 2003 R2 is the source machine, unsigned driver installation must be supported.