topic Re: FMC Migration from VMware to Hyper-V in Network Security

FMC Migration from VMware to Hyper-V

rueckertd — Wed, 03 Jul 2024 08:55:09 GMT

Hello together,

I am faced with the challenge that our customer wants to migrate his FMC installation from VMware to Hyper-V because he has switched his entire server infrastructure to Hyper-V. Unfortunately, there is currently no documented and supported migration path from VMware to Hyper-V.

The version currently in use is 7.4.1.1-12

Now the question is: Has anyone already carried out a migration from VMware to Hyper-V or does anyone know whether the migration from VMware to Hyper-V will also be included in the "Model Migration Guide" and migration scripts in the future?

Given VMware's new licensing model, some customers will certainly want to switch.

Thank you in advance.

Daniel

Re: FMC Migration from VMware to Hyper-V

ccieexpert — Thu, 04 Jul 2024 04:04:59 GMT

I think a backup and restore from FMC should work if its the same version of software. Have you tried that by keeping the hyper-v FMC VM in a isolated segment so it cannot talk to the devices and just for verifying that the backup was successfull ?

Re: FMC Migration from VMware to Hyper-V

Marvin Rhoads — Thu, 04 Jul 2024 04:19:09 GMT

A straight backup and restore will NOT work as the model number is encoded in the backup files.

Instead, use the work around I mentioned in the following thread: https://community.cisco.com/t5/network-security/can-fmc-running-in-vsphere-be-migrated-to-aws/td-p/4569305/page/2

I've used that to successfully migrate to otherwise-unsupported paths.

Re: FMC Migration from VMware to Hyper-V

rueckertd — Thu, 04 Jul 2024 13:05:47 GMT

Thank you very much for the quick reply. I will be doing the migration this way soon. I was able to change the hardware model this way. Attached is an updated list of the possible hardware models:

To reset this Secure Firewall Management Center for VMware to a new model the Secure Firewall Management Center for VMwarewill be stopped and rebooted.

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Stop the Secure Firewall Management Center for VMware to configure new model and reboot? [y/n] y
Stopping Cisco Secure Firewall Management Center for VMware......ok
Please select the model to configure to:

1) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_for_VMware
2) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_for_AWS
3) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_for_KVM
4) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_1000
5) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_2500
6) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_4500
7) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_1600
8 ) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_2600
9) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_4600
10) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_for_Azure
11) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_for_GCP
12) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_for_VMWare_300
13) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_1700
14) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_2700
15) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_4700
16) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_for_Alibaba
17) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_for_OCI
18) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_for_OpenStack
19) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_for_OCI_300
20) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_for_AWS_300
21) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_for_KVM_300
22) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_for_Azure_300
23) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_for_Nutanix
24) Secure_Firewall_Management_Center_for_Hyper-V
Please select model configure to:

---

It is interesting that the possible migration paths were removed from the online documentation overnight. I will report whether the migration was successful.

Re: FMC Migration from VMware to Hyper-V

ccieexpert — Thu, 04 Jul 2024 21:18:47 GMT

Yes your are right.. i did this a few years ago and had forgotten about it..

Re: FMC Migration from VMware to Hyper-V

rueckertd — Mon, 15 Jul 2024 09:51:35 GMT

Today I was able to successfully migrate from VMware to Hyper-V using the workaround.

The first step was to switch the platform to VMware_300, run the migration tool and then switch back to Hyper-V.

Then follow the migration path by deregistering the license on the source system and re-registering it on the target system.

Done.