Watch Ronny Issac's talk
Moving workloads from traditional vSphere environments to Kubernetes with KubeVirt unlocks cloud-native benefits, but doing it safely and consistently is not trivial. In this talk, Ronny Issac explains the technical flow of migrating VMs from vSphere to KubeVirt using Forklift, the open-source migration engine built to handle real-world complexity. He shows how Forklift orchestrates the process: connecting to vSphere via VDDK, mapping storage and networks, using virt-v2v for guest conversion, and creating KubeVirt VirtualMachine and DataVolume resources on the destination cluster. The session compares cold and warm migration approaches, explains how CDI and incremental disk copies fit into the pipeline, and clarifies why live migration is limited to KubeVirt-to-KubeVirt scenarios. Whether you are planning a hybrid strategy or a full migration, you will leave with a clear picture of the architecture, its constraints, and practical steps to move workloads to Kubernetes with minimal risk.
Key Takeaways
- The Forklift Migration Pipeline: How VDDK, storage and network mapping, and virt-v2v work together to move VMs from vSphere to KubeVirt.
- Cold vs. Warm Migration: The trade-offs between the two approaches, and how CDI and incremental disk copies reduce downtime.
- Planning with Confidence: The architectural constraints to know, including live migration limits, and practical steps for a low-risk move.
