Keyboard shortcuts

Press ← or → to navigate between chapters

Press S or / to search in the book

Press ? to show this help

Press Esc to hide this help

Migrate to Virtual Machines (M2VM): ACE Exam Study Guide (2026)

M2VM

Image source: Google Cloud Documentation

1. Overview and Use Cases

Migrate to Virtual Machines is a lift-and-shift (Rehost) solution used to migrate physical or virtual machines into Compute Engine.

  • Supported Sources: VMware vSphere (on-premises), AWS (EC2), and Azure (VMs).
  • Key Benefit: Minimal downtime migration. Data is replicated in the background while the source VM remains running.
  • Target: All migrated workloads land as Compute Engine (GCE) instances.

2. Core Architecture Components

  • Migration Center: The unified platform for discovery, assessment, and planning.
  • Migrate Connector: An appliance (OVA for VMware) installed on the source environment to facilitate discovery and data replication to GCP.
  • Host Project: The project where you enable the Migration API and manage the migration process.
  • Target Project: The project where the final Compute Engine instances will be created and run.
  • Replication: The process of continuously syncing data from the source to a Cloud Storage bucket or Persistent Disk in GCP.

3. The Migration Lifecycle

The order of operations is a common exam topic:

  1. Assess: Use Migration Center to discover inventory, estimate costs, and check OS compatibility.
  2. Plan: Group VMs into Migration Groups to manage them together (e.g., all VMs for a specific application).
  3. Deploy (Replicate): Start the replication of data from source to GCP.
  4. Test Clone: Create a sandbox instance in GCP to verify the VM boots and the application works without affecting the source VM.
  5. Cutover:
    • Shuts down the source VM.
    • Performs a final data sync.
    • Starts the production VM in Compute Engine.
  6. Finalize/Detach: Once the migration is verified, the connection to the source is severed, and the migration is marked as complete.

4. Networking and Security

  • Connectivity: Requires a stable connection between the source and GCP. Cloud Interconnect is preferred for large migrations; Cloud VPN is used for smaller ones.
  • Firewalls: Port 443 (HTTPS) must be open for the Migrate Connector to communicate with GCP APIs.
  • IAM Roles:
    • vmmigration.admin: Full control over the migration process.
    • vmmigration.viewer: Read-only access to migration status.
    • The Service Account used by the connector needs storage.admin and compute.admin permissions.

5. Key Exam Tips and Gotchas

  • Test Clone vs. Cutover: A Test Clone does NOT stop the source VM. A Cutover DOES stop the source VM.
  • Downtime: The only downtime occurs during the Cutover phase (usually minutes), as the VM must be rebooted in the new environment.
  • OS Support: Ensure the OS is supported by GCP (e.g., specific versions of RHEL, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu, or Windows Server).
  • IP Addresses: By default, VMs get new internal IP addresses in GCP unless you manually configure the VPC/Subnet to match the source.
  • Machine Types: In 2026, consider using N4 or C4 machine types for migrated workloads to optimize for performance and cost.

6. Comparison with Other Tools

  • Database Migration Service (DMS): Use for Cloud SQL migrations, NOT for full VMs.
  • Storage Transfer Service: Use for moving large amounts of data (e.g., S3 to GCS), NOT for OS/boot disks.
  • Anthos Migrate: Used specifically for migrating VMs directly into Containers (GKE).