Why Enterprises are Switching
As proprietary models and evolving platform economics reshape virtualization decisions, many organizations are reassessing their infrastructure strategy.
Why Leaders Choose SUSE Virtualization
- Modernize without a full rewrite: Move legacy VMs onto a cloud-native platform with minimal disruption—at your own pace.
- Reclaim Your Budget: Achieve cost sovereignty. Replace unpredictable licensing with a transparent, open-source model that puts you back in control of your IT spend.
Built for the Next Frontier
- AI-Ready Infrastructure: Native NVIDIA MIG vGPU multitenancy lets you run multiple AI workloads on shared GPU resources — no specialized hardware stack required.
- Edge-Ready by Design: Our lightweight footprint deploys across decentralized edge locations with the same unified management — no separate edge stack to operate.
SUSE Virtualization Migration Checklist
1. Pre-Migration Assessment
- [ ] Inventory Discovery: Audit your vCenter to list all VMs, CPU/RAM allocations, and disk usage.
- [ ] OS Compatibility: Verify guest operating systems are supported by KubeVirt (most modern Linux and Windows versions).
- [ ] Network Mapping: Document existing VLANs, vSwitches, and IP configurations to map them to Harvester’s network settings.
- [ ] Performance Baselining: Record current IOPS and latency metrics to ensure the new HCI environment is sized correctly.
2. Infrastructure Readiness
- [ ] Hardware Validation: Ensure bare-metal nodes meet minimum specs (typically 8+ cores, 32GB+ RAM) and support hardware virtualization (Intel VT-x/AMD-V).
- [ ] Storage Setup: Confirm Longhorn (built-in storage) has sufficient capacity—aim for 2x the size of your largest VM to allow for snapshotting and migration buffers.
- [ ] Add-on Activation: Enable the VM Import Controller in the SUSE Virtualization console.
3. Execution (The Migration Path)
- [ ] Credential Integration: Securely connect Harvester to your vCenter/ESXi endpoint using a Secret containing your credentials.
- [ ] Source Verification: Use the UI or CLI to verify the "VmwareSource" is marked as Ready.
- [ ] VM Preparation: * For Cold Migration: Shut down the VM to ensure data consistency.
For Warm Migration: Ensure Changed Block Tracking (CBT) is enabled on the VMware side. - [ ] Import Initiation: Map the VMware source networks to Harvester VLANs and trigger the import.
4. Post-Migration & Optimization
- [ ] Driver Update: Replace VMware Tools with VirtIO drivers (or open-vm-tools) for optimized disk and network performance.
- [ ] Backup Configuration: Integrate with an enterprise-grade tool like Veeam Kasten or use Harvester's native S3-based backup.
- [ ] Rancher Integration: Import the new cluster into SUSE Rancher to manage both these VMs and your Kubernetes containers side-by-side.