Migration and modernization tools

Migration and modernization tools are at the center of migration execution. They allow you to move your existing workloads to Google Cloud and to take advantage of Google Cloud managed services when you modernize your infrastructure.

This document presents the main tools that Google Cloud professional service teams use during migration and modernization projects.

Google Cloud tools

This table presents some of the migration and modernization tools available in Google Cloud.

Strategy

Tools

Source

Destination

Description

Lift and shift

Migrate to Virtual Machines

On-premises VMware VMs

VMs from other cloud environments

Compute Engine

Tool to migrate virtual machines from on-premises and cloud environments to Google Cloud.

VMware HCX

On-premises VMware VMs

VMware VMs running in alternate clouds

Google Cloud VMware Engine

Tool to migrate virtual machines (VMs) from on-premises environments to Google Cloud VMware Engine. VMware HCX abstracts vSphere-based on-premises and cloud resources and presents them to applications as one continuous resource, creating a hybrid infrastructure.

Replatform

Migrate to Containers

On-premises physical servers, VMs, GKE

GKE, Autopilot, GKE Enterprise, Cloud Run

Tool used to convert VM-based workloads into containers in Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) or GKE Enterprise. Workloads can be migrated from VMs running on either VMware on-premises, AWS, Azure, or Compute Engine, giving the flexibility to containerize the existing workloads with ease.

Datastream

PostgreSQL (including AlloyDB for PostgreSQL and AlloyDB Omni), MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle

Cloud Storage, BigQuery

This tool is a serverless change data capture (CDC) and replication service that lets you synchronize data reliably, and with minimal latency. It provides seamless replication of data from operational databases into BigQuery, and supports writing the change event stream into Cloud Storage. You can also integrate Datastream with Dataflow templates to build custom workflows for loading data into destinations such as Cloud SQL and Spanner.

Database Migration Service

PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle

Cloud SQL, AlloyDB for PostgreSQL

This tool is a serverless service that helps migrate PostgreSQL workloads into Cloud SQL and AlloyDB for PostgreSQL, MySQL and SQL Server workloads into Cloud SQL, and Oracle workloads into Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL or AlloyDB for PostgreSQL. Database Migration Service streamlines networking workflows, manages the initial snapshot and ongoing replication, and provides a status of the migration operations.

Refactor

BigQuery Data Transfer Service

Teradata, Amazon RedShift

BigQuery

This tool automates data movement from software-as-a-service apps to BigQuery on a scheduled, managed basis.

Based on the nature of the workloads that you want to migrate, you might want to integrate other tools with your migration tools architecture. The following list includes additional migration tools:

Storage Transfer Service lets you bring data to Cloud Storage from other cloud providers, online resources, or local data (for example: S3, Blob, Data Lake, on-premises file systems).
Transfer Appliance is a hardware appliance you can use to migrate large volumes of data (recommended for data that exceeds 20 TBs and up to 1 petabyte) to Google Cloud without disrupting business operations.
Image Import lets you to import virtual disks in your on-premises environment with software and configurations that you need (a.k.a. golden disks or golden images) into Google Cloud and uses the resulting image to create virtual machines. The tool supports most virtual disk file formats, including VMDK and VHD.

Third-party tools

The following list includes third-party migration tools. The list is meant as a reference only, and doesn't represent a statement of support by Google.

RackWare Management Module (RMM) is a fully-automated enterprise-grade migration solution that lets you migrate physical and virtual servers from any data center or public cloud into Google Cloud. It is listed in Google Cloud Marketplace, and you can purchase a license in two ways:
- Within the Cloud Marketplace, by selecting RackWare Cloud Migration SaaS and API .
- Directly from RackWare, by selecting RackWare Cloud Migration Virtual Machine .
SUREedge is a tool that lets you migrate physical and virtual environments to Google Cloud when Migrate to Virtual Machines might not be a fit, for example for on-premises non-vSphere virtualized environments.
Data Validation Tool is an open sourced Python CLI tool based on the Ibis framework that compares heterogeneous data source tables with multi-leveled validation functions. Data validation is a critical step in a Data Warehouse, Database or Data Lake migration project.
HarbourBridge: Spanner Evaluation and Migration is a standalone open source tool for Spanner evaluation and migration, using data from an existing PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, Oracle or DynamoDB database.
HBase Tools help HBase users with migrations to Bigtable.
Migrate Hive tables to BigQuery framework migrates data from Hive to BigQuery using Cloud SQL to keep track of the migration progress.