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**Hypervisor Migration Hacking: Protecting Data in the Age of VMware Migrations**
The acquisition of VMware by Broadcom in 2023 has triggered a wave of migrations that is expected to continue through 2028. As IT teams begin to transition from VMware to alternative hypervisors, they must be aware of the technical and operational risks involved in this process. In this article, we'll explore the challenges of hypervisor migration and provide actionable advice on how to protect data during this critical phase.
**The Risks of Hypervisor Migration**
Migrating from VMware to another hypervisor may seem like a straightforward process, but it's far more complex than it appears. Hypervisors don't interoperate, which means that multiple technical variables can increase the risk of failed or unstable migrations. These variables include disk formats, hardware abstractions, driver stacks, and networking models, which can create instability that only surfaces under real production pressure.
**The Importance of Backup and Recovery**
The most critical prerequisite for any platform migration is a verified, restorable backup. Organizations must protect workloads with full-image, application-consistent backups that can be restored not only to the same hypervisor but also to dissimilar hardware or an entirely different virtualization platform. IT teams must perform recovery drills before they start migration, not just after cutover.
**The Three Risks Most Teams Underestimate During Migration**
Even the most carefully planned and executed migrations can fail for predictable reasons. Here are three risks that IT teams often underestimate during migration:
1. **Planned Downtime**: Teams often plan for an ideal level of downtime, but migrations frequently stretch beyond maintenance windows. If a window closes when systems are not stable, organizations can suffer missed transactions, stalled operations, SLA violations, and reputational damage. 2. **Backup and Recovery Gaps**: Migration creates a gray zone for backup and disaster recovery, with environments often split between old and new platforms. IT teams must maintain parallel protection during overlap periods to ensure workloads are recoverable from both the legacy and target platforms until the transition is finished. 3. **An Expanding Attack Surface**: Migration also expands your attack surface, with complexity spiking when two hypervisor stacks are running. Backup repositories can become high-value targets, and IT teams must protect them against modification or deletion, even by privileged accounts.
**The Value of a Natively Integrated Platform**
Maintaining parallel protection is essential, but it also increases management complexity. A unified cyber protection platform can simplify this process for IT teams by delivering consistent backup, recovery, and security controls across physical servers, hypervisors, and cloud workloads through a single point of control.
**Conclusion**
Hypervisor migration is a high-stakes infrastructure change that requires careful planning and execution. IT teams must be aware of the technical and operational risks involved in this process and take proactive steps to protect data during migration. By prioritizing backup and recovery, mitigating the three risks most teams underestimate, and leveraging a natively integrated platform, organizations can reduce the risk of migration and ensure business continuity.
**Learn More**
If you're planning a move away from VMware, see how Acronis Cyber Protect helps organizations migrate faster and stay protected at every step. With its flexible, responsive platform, AI-powered security, backup, and recovery, and natively integrated solution, Acronis Cyber Protect accelerates VMware migration and ensures data protection throughout the process.