MTV Manager

Turn large-scale VM migrations into a manageable workflow

Red Hat Migration Toolkit for Virtualization (MTV) provides the technical foundation for migrating virtual machines to OpenShift Virtualization.

But as the number of virtual machines grows, migration becomes more than a technical task.

Which machines are ready? Who is responsible for them? Which migrations are currently running? Which systems require special handling? Who verifies the application after migration? And how do you keep track of hundreds of machines moving through different stages at the same time?

MTV Manager adds the management, coordination and workflow layer around MTV.

It provides a common interface where migration engineers, project managers and system owners can follow each virtual machine from initial inventory to completed and verified migration.

MTV handles the migration. MTV Manager handles the process.

MTV remains responsible for performing the actual migration.

MTV Manager focuses on everything surrounding it.

A virtual machine can move through a controlled workflow such as:

Discovered → Planned → Assigned → Ready → Migrating → Migrated → Awaiting Verification → Verified

Technical information from OpenShift and MTV is combined with operational information about the migration.

This creates a migration workflow rather than simply a collection of migration plans and virtual machines.

 

One view of the entire migration project

Large migration projects quickly become difficult to manage using individual migration plans alone.

MTV Manager provides a central dashboard showing both the overall project status and the state of individual virtual machines.

The dashboard can provide information such as:

total number of virtual machines
planned migrations
machines ready for migration
migrations currently running
completed migrations
failed migrations
systems awaiting verification
verified systems
assigned migration engineer
verification owner
migration plan
target environment
network mapping
storage selection
This makes MTV Manager useful both for engineers performing the migrations and for teams coordinating the overall migration project.

Live integration with OpenShift and MTV

MTV Manager uses OpenShift and Migration Toolkit for Virtualization as authoritative sources for the technical migration state.

Migration progress can be collected directly from MTV and translated into a clear operational status.

Instead of navigating multiple OpenShift resources to determine what is happening, an operator can see the relevant migration state directly in MTV Manager.

Detailed progress can include stages such as:

Initialization → Disk Allocation → Disk Transfer → Conversion → Finalization

Technical migration progress and project workflow therefore become part of the same view.

 

Make hundreds of migrations understandable

A migration involving a handful of virtual machines can be coordinated manually.

A migration involving hundreds or thousands cannot.

The challenge is no longer simply moving data from one hypervisor to another. It becomes a coordination problem involving infrastructure, applications, networking, storage, scheduling and people.

MTV Manager provides the missing operational layer between these areas.

Each VM becomes a managed migration object with ownership, metadata, technical state and workflow history.

This allows teams to quickly answer questions such as:

What can we migrate tonight?

What is currently blocking the next migration batch?

Who owns this system?

Which systems still need verification?

What failed during the last migration window?

 

Built for customization

Every migration project has different requirements.

MTV Manager is therefore designed so that the core functionality can be extended with organization-specific workflows and integrations.

A customized deployment can add functionality such as:

custom metadata
organization-specific migration states
network mapping rules
storage placement rules
automated pre-flight validation
CMDB or inventory integration
project-specific dashboards
reporting
notifications
custom roles and permissions
external approval workflows
This allows the core application to remain generic while customer-specific functionality is implemented as an extension layer.

 

Microsoft Entra ID integration

MTV Manager can integrate with existing enterprise identity platforms.

Microsoft Entra ID can be used for authentication and Single Sign-On, but identity integration can provide considerably more value than authentication alone.

Users, groups and migration responsibilities can be connected to real organizational identities.

Fields such as:

Assigned to

and

Verification responsible

can reference actual enterprise identities rather than locally maintained names.

Once identity becomes part of the migration data model, additional workflow automation becomes possible.

 

Automated verification workflows

Completing the technical migration does not necessarily mean that the migration is complete.

Someone still needs to verify that the application or service works correctly in its new environment.

MTV Manager can be extended to automate this process.

When MTV reports that a migration has completed, MTV Manager can identify the person responsible for verification and automatically send a notification.

For example:

The migration of your system has completed. Please verify that the service is operating correctly.

The notification could contain two actions:

Verification successful

Verification failed

Selecting an action can immediately update the migration in MTV Manager.

No knowledge of OpenShift or MTV is required, and the application owner does not necessarily need to log in to MTV Manager.

A successful verification can close the migration automatically.

A failed verification can return the migration to the technical team for investigation while preserving the complete workflow history.

With Microsoft Entra ID and Microsoft Graph integration, this concept can be extended to email, Microsoft Teams, approval workflows and organizational groups.

 

Automated pre-flight validation

Automation can also take place before a migration starts.

MTV Manager can be extended with pre-flight checks that determine whether a virtual machine meets the organization’s requirements for migration.

Checks could include:

network mapping
storage availability
available capacity
VMware snapshots
VMware Tools status
operating system compatibility
assigned CPU and memory
target environment readiness
migration ownership
verification ownership
required metadata
Instead of relying entirely on manual preparation, MTV Manager could automatically mark a VM as:

Ready for migration

only when the required conditions have been satisfied.

This makes migration batches easier to prepare and reduces the risk of discovering preventable problems during a migration window.

 

From dashboard to migration automation platform

MTV Manager solves an immediate problem: creating visibility and structure around large numbers of simultaneous VM migrations.

But the same architecture provides a foundation for much more.

By combining OpenShift, MTV, enterprise identity and external systems, MTV Manager can evolve from a migration dashboard into a workflow and automation platform for large-scale virtualization migrations.

Inventory and planning can feed migration preparation.

Preparation can feed automated validation.

Validation can feed MTV.

MTV can feed verification.

Verification can close the migration.

All while maintaining ownership and status throughout the process.

MTV performs the migration.

MTV Manager manages the journey.