The Sangfor HCI supports unified management of the VMware platform through integration with VMware’s API interface, without affecting the customer’s existing platform usage.

It supports bidirectional migration of virtual machines between the VMware platform and the Sangfor HCI, as well as backing up virtual machines from the VMware platform to the Sangfor HCI.

Once HCI or the SCP has managed a vCenter, the platform supports migrating VMware VMs to itself for operation. Migrations can be performed while the VM is powered on, and at the final stage, the VMware VM is shut down to complete the process.

This migration method uses the VMware cluster management approach and performs direct online migrations without requiring any prior installation of migration tools. It is only available for HCI v5.8.2 and later, and it works by calling VMware’s API to migrate the VMware VM to the Sangfor HCI platform.

For an online migration, HCI first creates a new VM. It then uses incremental backup to continuously sync the VMware VM’s data to the HCI platform. When the incremental data size becomes sufficiently small (less than 256 MB), the VMware VM is shut down, and the final incremental data is synced to HCI. As a result, the migration will briefly pause the business.

At the final stage of an online migration from a VMware VM to the Sangfor HCI platform, the VMware VM must be powered off.