VM Replication Using the Import Method

The import method for replication is only supported from other hypervisors to Amazon Web Services.

If the prerequisites for HotAdd restores are not met, conversion or replication to Amazon uses the import method:

Upload the virtual machine disks to S3 as pages.
- The naming convention for the temporary S3 bucket that is used to hold the VHD file is gx-restore-region_name-account_id. You can override the default naming convention for S3 buckets by adding the AmazonBucketForImport additional setting to the VSA access node.
  
  For instructions on using Additional Settings in the CommCell Console, see Add or Modify an Additional Setting.
- The S3 pages are retained as integrity snapshots for the next incremental replication.
Merge the S3 pages uploaded for each disk to form a single VHD.
Import the OS disk as an AMI and additional disks as snapshots.
Launch an Amazon instance from the imported AMI and attach the additional disks (volumes) from the imported snapshots.
Delete the AMI and snapshots from AWS and the merged VHDs from the S3 bucket.

If you are using the Import method when you perform a full instance restore operation for AWS, convert a VM to an AWS instance, or replicate a VM to AWS by using the Import method, Commvault creates an S3 bucket for the destination automatically. The bucket is named gx-restore-region_name-account_id, where region_name is the name of the AWS region and account_id is the AWS account for the virtualization client.

When replicating a VM to a Nitro instance type, certain drivers must be pre-installed on the guest. For information, see Preparing the Source VM for Conversion to an Amazon EC2 Instance.

Supported Operating Systems

For information about Amazon's supported VM operating systems, see VM AWS Import/Export Requirements.
Operating systems can be imported to and exported from Amazon EC2. For more information about whether a Region is enabled by default, see Available Regions in the Amazon EC2 User Guide for Linux Instances.

See Required configuration for VM export for information about preparing the guest machine.