Protecting data during hypervisor migration

Broadcom’s acquisition of VMware in 2023 set off a wave of migrations that shows no signs of subsiding. But moving from VMware to another hypervisor may introduce significant technical and operational risks.

IT teams must prepare for challenges that are not always apparent at the start of a migration.

Price hikes, licensing changes and shifts in customer support have driven VMware customers to look for alternatives. Recent operational problems haven’t helped.

Last year, VMware Workstation auto-updates failed due to a Broadcom URL redirect. In 2026, the migration continues. Gartner research VP Julia Palmer recently predicted that VMware would lose 35% of its workloads by 2028.

Many of those workloads will shift to platforms such as Microsoft Hyper‑V, Azure Stack HCI, Nutanix AHV, Proxmox VE or KVM. Unfortunately, the journey comes with challenges. Switching hypervisors is a high-stakes infrastructure change.

IT professionals need to focus on completing a successful migration with their data intact and available.

Why hypervisor migration is technically risky

It sounds simple: Export data, convert it to a new format and then import it into a new hypervisor. But that process is far riskier than it sounds.

That’s because hypervisors don’t interoperate. Multiple technical variables increase the risk of failed or unstable migrations. Hypervisors differ in disk formats, hardware abstractions, driver stacks and networking models.

Virtual hardware versions, storage controllers, chipset emulation and network virtualization layers don’t always translate cleanly.

Snapshots and templates behave differently. Even subtle configuration differences can create instability that only surfaces once workloads are under real production pressure.

Backup is essential to a successful hypervisor migration

The most important prerequisite for any platform migration is not a conversion tool. It is verified, restorable backup.

Organizations need to protect workloads with full-image, application-consistent backups that IT pros can restore not only to the same hypervisor but to dissimilar hardware or an entirely different virtualization platform.

IT teams need to perform recovery drills before they start migration, not just after cutover.

A platform-agnostic backup architecture provides a necessary safety net. It enables restoration from the source environment to the destination environment, and it allows rapid reversion to the original platform if compatibility or performance issues arise.

The bottom line is that data remains safe and accessible.

Any-to-any hypervisor recovery — restoration from physical, virtual or cloud environments to any other destination — reduces migration risk and has the added advantage of reducing long-term vendor lock-in.

How to avoid three risks most teams underestimate during migration

Even the most carefully planned and executed migrations can fail for predictable reasons.

1. Teams often underestimate planned downtime

Too many teams plan for an ideal level of downtime as opposed to a worst-case scenario. Unfortunately, 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.

That’s why migration planning must include a formal business continuity strategy, Ask in advance:

• How long can each workload realistically be offline?
• What happens if rollback is required?
• Who makes the go or no-go decision?
• What is the communication plan if restoration time exceeds expectations?

Backup and recovery are critical. The ability to quickly restore workloads to their original platform can mean the difference between a short delay and a multi-day outage.

2. Backup and recovery gaps can plague transitions

Migration creates a dangerous gray zone for backup and disaster recovery, with environments are often split between old and new platforms. That is when recoverability must be strongest. The time it takes to restore backups from either environment is critical.

Common gaps appear when:

• Backup chains are broken during VM exports.
• Incremental backup jobs may fail after platform conversion.
• Application-consistent snapshots are not validated on the new hypervisor.
• DR replication targets are not synchronized during phased cutovers.

Backup and recovery must function continuously throughout the migration. IT teams need to maintain parallel protection during overlap periods so that workloads are recoverable from both the legacy and target platforms until the transition is finished.

3. An expanding attack surface means backup images need protection

Migration also expands your attack surface.

With two hypervisor stacks running, complexity spikes. Backup repositories, an image-level backups in particular, can become high-value targets. If attackers compromise them during migration, your rollback and recovery options disappear.

Immutability is essential during this phase. IT teams need to protect backup images against modification or deletion, even by privileged accounts. They need to tighten role-based access controls and limit administrative access.

Equally important is adherence to the 3-2-1 principle: At least three copies of data, on two different media types, with one copy stored off-site or offline. During migration, that third copy becomes critical insurance.

If both production and primary backup infrastructure are affected, an isolated copy preserves your recovery path.

The value of a natively integrated platform

Maintaining parallel protection is essential because it lowers operational risk. However, it also increases management complexity. Two hypervisor stacks, multiple storage systems and parallel protection policies must coexist without creating gaps.

A unified cyber protection platform can simplify this process for IT teams. A unified cyber protection platform can reduce complexity by delivering consistent backup, recovery and security controls across physical servers, hypervisors and cloud workloads through a single point of control.

Natively integrated protection and migration capabilities in Acronis Cyber Protect can reduce transition timelines while maintaining rollback readiness and continuous synchronization.

Migration as a resilience opportunity

The shift away from VMware has made one concept clear: Migration planning is a long-term competency, not a one-time project.

Teams that succeed treat hypervisor transitions as resilience exercises. They validate backups in advance, ensure cross-platform recovery capability, maintain rollback paths, harden backup storage against ransomware and verify data integrity after cutover.

With these safeguards in place, migration becomes more predictable and significantly more likely to succeed.

VMware migrations don’t have to be slow, risky or disruptive.

With Acronis Cyber Protect, IT teams gain a flexible, responsive platform that accelerates migration while delivering AI‑powered security, backup and recovery in one natively integrated solution.

If you’re planning a move away from VMware, see how Acronis helps organizations migrate faster and stay protected at every step.

Learn how Acronis Cyber Protect accelerates VMware migration.

Sponsored and written by Acronis.