Effortlessly Migrate Your OpenShift and Kubernetes Applications to IBM Cloud

IBM Cloud offers an efficient and secure environment to containerize and deploy applications using IBM OpenShift and IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service. With a range of storage options available, users can choose the most suitable one for their specific needs. If you’re looking to migrate your containerized applications to either an IBM OpenShift cluster or an IBM Kubernetes cluster, RackWare SWIFT provides the perfect solution.

RackWare SWIFT is a robust migration and disaster recovery tool designed for containerized workloads across various platforms, including:

• Oracle Kubernetes Engine (OKE)

• Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS)

• Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

• AWS Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)

• IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service

• OpenShift

Let’s explore how you can easily migrate workloads to IBM Cloud using RackWare SWIFT. We’ll highlight two key use cases: migrating to IBM OpenShift Cluster and migrating to IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service cluster.

Migrating Workloads to IBM OpenShift Cluster

In this example, we’ll demonstrate how to migrate Jenkins—an open-source automation server—from an AWS OpenShift Origin (OKD) cluster to an IBM OpenShift Container Platform (OCP) cluster running on VPC Gen2 Infrastructure.

With RackWare SWIFT, the migration process is straightforward and involves two simple steps:

Step 1: Add Source and Target Clusters to SWIFT

To get started, navigate to the ‘Container Clusters’ section from the left sidebar and click the ‘Add’ button.

Begin by adding the AWS OKD cluster to SWIFT. You’ll need to enter your AWS cloud credentials and then click the ‘Add’ button to proceed.

Next, add the IBM OpenShift cluster by selecting the appropriate ‘Cloud Type’. SWIFT supports two types of OpenShift on IBM:

• Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform (OCP)

• OpenShift Origin (OKD)

Choose the right type of OpenShift for your use case and add the clusters accordingly.

Once both clusters are added, SWIFT will show a summary of the clusters. You can expand each cluster to view detailed information gathered by SWIFT.

Step 2: Initiate Replication

From the sidebar, go to ‘Sync Administration’ and select ‘All Replications’. To start a new replication, click the ‘New’ button.

SWIFT supports two types of replication: application replication and container image replication. For migrating the application, select ‘Application Replication’.

You’ll be prompted to select a sync type. For this migration, choose ‘Passthrough Sync’. If you were setting up for disaster recovery, you would select ‘Staged Sync’ (Stage1+Stage2).

Provide the details for both the source and target clusters, and choose the storage supported by your target IBM cluster for the replicated application. After filling out the required information, click ‘Add’ to begin the replication.

Once the replication is complete, you’ll receive a notification. You can monitor progress and review synchronization statistics by expanding the replication job. Afterward, you can access the newly replicated application directly from the IBM OpenShift cluster console.

Migrating Workloads to IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service Cluster

The migration steps to the IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service cluster are virtually identical to those for OpenShift. The only difference is that, when adding the IBM cluster, you’ll select ‘Kubernetes’ as the platform type.

Conclusion

Using RackWare SWIFT, migrating containerized workloads from any container platform, version, or cloud to IBM Cloud is an easy and automated process. SWIFT provides fully automated features like application customization, storage conversions, and volume resizing, allowing you to sit back and relax while it handles the hard work. Whether you are moving to IBM OpenShift or IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service, SWIFT streamlines the migration and ensures a smooth transition to the cloud.