You define scenarios that can potentially migrate workloads to a public cloud or to VMware Cloud on AWS. Use this scenario to determine where to move the workloads.vRealize Operations models the scenario and calculates the cost and capacity to fit your desired workload.

Where You Find What-If Analysis - Migration Planning

In the left menu, click Plan > Capacity. The Capacity Plan page opens. Click What-If Analysis and in the What-If Analysis page, click the ADD button. Click Select in the pane titled Migration Planning.

How What-If Analysis - Migration Planning Works

This feature of Capacity Optimization lets you to forecast successfully the impact of migrating a workload to a public cloud instance such as AWS, IBM Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud or to VMware Cloud on AWS. Once you select the Migration Planning screen, choose whether you want to run the scenario against a public cloud or VMware Cloud on AWS. For a public cloud, select the region where you want to migrate the workload. If the public clouds listed out of the box do not suit your needs, you can also define your own public cloud and upload a rate card.

In defining the profile of your workload, you have two options:
  • Configure the workload manually by specifying vCPUs, memory, storage, and expected use percentage.
  • Use an existing VM or VMs as templates, importing all the attributes of the selected VMs to your workload scenario. The system allows you to specify how many copies of each selected VM you want to add to the proposed workload.

When you have set the profile for the migrating workload, run the scenario to get the vRealize Operations analysis and assessment of your plan. You can also select up to three public clouds (but not VMware Cloud on AWS) to compare results. Alternatively, you can save the scenario to edit or run later on. A list of saved scenarios is available in the Saved Scenarios tab on the What-If analysis page.

For a public cloud target, the system lets you know immediately if the workload proposed for migration fits or does not fit in the suggested location. For example, if you selected AWS and the workload fits, the results list the Amazon Web Services Assessment, with details of the VMware Configuration and the AWS Equivalent. If the proposed workload does not fit, an error message appears: "Unable to identify a matching configuration instance in target location."

If you selected VMware Cloud on AWS for your scenario, the results list the VMware Cloud on AWS Assessment, with details of the VMware configuration. The system also displays the resource-use-level cost and the monthly purchase cost for an on-demand subscription. In addition, the system displays the resource-use-level cost and monthly purchase cost for one-year and three-year subscriptions.

About Clouds

The system might provide a recommendation based on the cost of placing the workload on different clouds. This cost-based recommendation varies for different clouds. You can modify the costs for public clouds by uploading a new rate card.

For VMware Cloud on AWS, the system displays the resource-use-level cost and the monthly purchase cost for an on-demand subscription, plus those same costs for one-year and three-year subscriptions.

Public cloud costs are based on the selected configuration, that is, the allocated resources.

The public instance is selected based on the close proximity rule, with simulated resource allocation values. In some scenarios, an exact configuration match is not available in the list. Due to this lack of availability, the public cost can be inherently higher in comparison.