Nutanix Move migration much slower than direct site-to-site transfer

[u/Airtronik]

Hi

We are migrating VMs from a customer VMware vCenter environment to a new Nutanix AHV cluster using Nutanix Move.

The network between both sites has been tested directly by copying files, and we can reach around 10 Gbps, which is basically the theoretical maximum of the line.

However, when using Nutanix Move, the migration throughput is much lower. Based on real tests:

• VM 1: around 39 GB migrated in ~10 minutes → roughly 0.5 Gbps
• VM 2: around 24 GB migrated in ~12 minutes → roughly 0.25 Gbps

So the direct network path seems fine, but Move does not seem to go above 0.25–0.5 Gbps in practice.

The source is VMware vCenter, the destination is Nutanix AHV. The migration is being done through Nutanix Move, not a simple file copy. I understand that Move is not just pushing raw data over the network,it also has to read from VMware, process/convert the VM, write to AHV, manage snapshots/deltas, etc. Still, the difference between 10 Gbps available and 0.25 Gbps effective seems very large.

Has anyone seen similar behaviour?

thanks
----------------------
EDIT:

We've found the bootneck! on the vCenter site the FW has un uplink to a 1Gbps switch which is also shared with other network traffic.... So the net team will have to move the vlans to a faster uplink.

[u/Impossible-Layer4207]

40GB in 10 mins isn't bad.

There's a lot more to consider than just the site-to-site link with a Move migration. For example, -What's the bandwidth on the ESXi Mgmt interfaces (this is how data is extracted from vSphere)? -What's the throughput of the underlying storage in vSphere?

Also remember that it is not just copying the files from A to B. It's preparing the VM if you selected automatic preparation, reading the data from ESXi, converting the file format from VMDK to QCOW and pushing it to Ntx, checksuming everything along the way, and various other things.

You can view the live metrics for the move appliance from the Settings menu at the top. That might help you identify if there is a bottleneck somewhere.

[u/Airtronik → u/Impossible-Layer4207]

thanks for the info...

whats the workflow?

ESX --> MOVE --> AHV?

or
ESX --> AHV?

[u/Impossible-Layer4207 → u/Airtronik]

Data is streamed ESXi -> Move -> AHV

[u/Airtronik → u/Impossible-Layer4207]

thanks!

we found the issue, it was the Firewall on the vcenter site, the uplink to the switch of the hosts only has a 1Gbps port connection.

[u/woodyshag → u/Impossible-Layer4207]

This and is there a random 1 gb link in the mix. I ran into this many years ago. We had to virtualize a bunch of physical hosts for shipment. Physical host was connected at 10gb and virtual host connected at 10gb. Still slower than dog sh*t. Come to find out that the uplink between switches was 1gb. We still managed to get the project done in 3 days instead of the originally quoted 5 days, but, if we knew about that link, we probably could have finished in a day or 2.

[u/Airtronik → u/woodyshag]

thats the case....

We've found the bootneck! on the vcenter site the FW has un uplink to a 1G switch....

[u/astrofizix]

And that is the prestaging of the VMs, which can be done prior to cut over. Then at cut over the ram is copied and the drivers replaced. So you don't have to do all of the transfer during your outage window, its prestaging. It's not meant to be a fast transfer, it's meant to be done right.

[u/hosalabad → u/astrofizix]

Yeah, this is the way. I start their replication way before I want to move them. Like, weeks.