VM Conversion Using the AWS VM Import/Export Transport Mode

If the prerequisites for HotAdd restores are not met, conversion or replication to Amazon uses the AWS VM Import/Export transport mode as follows:

1. Upload the virtual machine disks to S3 as pages.

   The naming convention for the temporary S3 bucket that is used to hold VHD files is gx-restore-region_name-account_id.

2. The S3 pages are retained as integrity snapshots for the next incremental replication.

3. Merge the S3 pages uploaded for each disk to form a single VHD.

4. Import the OS disk as an AMI and additional disks as snapshots.

5. Launch an Amazon instance from the imported AMI and attach the additional disks (volumes) from the imported snapshots.

6. 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 Amazon, convert a VM to an Amazon instance, or replicate a VM to Amazon by using the Import method, Commvault Cloud 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 Amazon region and account_id is the Amazon account for the virtualization client.