Supported operating systems

To migrate a virtual machine (VM) from any migration source, the VM must be running an operating system supported by Migrate to Virtual Machines. This page lists the operating systems supported by Migrate to Virtual Machines for each migration source.

Some Compute Engine features require agents and services running on the VM. These agents and services are installed automatically during the migration. However, certain security features such as SELinux, anti-viruses, and firewalls, may interfere with these services and prevent certain features from functioning. In order to make sure that the guest environment functions properly, follow the steps in Loaded services for the guest environment and if needed, the Troubleshooting steps for Compute Engine.

To request support for any operating system, contact us at: m2vm-os-support-request@google.com.

Operating systems supported by partners

Migrate to Virtual Machines supports importing images and migrating VMs running the following operating systems supported by partners. Contact the Migrate to Virtual Machines support team if you need assistance to import images or migrate VMs with these operating systems. For more information on importing images and migrating VMs to Oracle Linux, see Oracle Linux on Google Cloud.

OS	Version	Default license	License option	BIOS to UEFI conversion supported	Comments
Oracle Linux	6.0 - 6.7	BYOL	N/A	No	Requires kernel-uek version of at least 4.1.12-37.4.1
	6.8 - 6.10	BYOL	N/A	No
	7.0 - 7.9	BYOL	N/A	No
	8.0 - 8.8	BYOL	N/A	No
	9.0 - 9.3	BYOL	N/A	No

Oracle Linux on Google Cloud

Google Cloud supports importing Oracle Linux images using the import virtual disk images capability of Migrate to Virtual Machines. Note that you don't incur any costs when using Oracle Linux on Google Cloud.

If you are running VMs on Compute Engine with Oracle Linux, Google Cloud provides support for your VMs as part of Google Cloud support packages. This includes support for Compute Engine capabilities and generic Linux support. If you need support for issues specifically related to Oracle Linux, we recommend that you consult community resources or get enterprise-grade support directly from Oracle.

While you can import Oracle Linux images with different configurations, we recommend that you either import the Oracle Linux Cloud Images published by Oracle, or import images that mimic their overall configuration or layout.

The following sections discuss the considerations you must keep in mind while importing Oracle Linux images to Google Cloud:

gVNIC driver requirements

The Google Virtual NIC (gVNIC) driver is needed for virtio-enabled VM families (and certain newer VM families) to have access to Tier1 networking that provides up to 100GB bandwidth.

• The gVNIC driver is supported, but is not configured on Oracle Linux images using the Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Release 7 (UEK7) kernel supported by Oracle Linux 8 and 9. In these cases, Migrate to Virtual Machines installs the kernel-uek-modules-extra package during the OS adaptation process to add support for the gVNIC driver. If you need the gVNIC driver, ensure that you don't enable the Skip OS adaptations option when you import virtual disk images.
• The gVNIC driver is not supported by the following Oracle Linux images:
  • The UEK6 kernel supported on Oracle Linux 7 and 8
  • The UEK5 kernel supported on Oracle Linux 7 only
  • UEK4 kernel supported in Oracle Linux 6 only using extended support

If you need the gVNIC driver, we recommend that you to switch to Oracle Linux 8 or 9 and use either UEK7 or Red Hat Compatible Kernel (RHCK) kernels.

IDPF driver requirements

The Infrastructure Data Plane Function (IDPF) driver is needed for certain Compute Engine machine series to have networking capabilities. However, the IDPF driver is not supported by the Oracle Linux images using UEK kernels and Oracle Linux 6 or 7 images using RHCK kernels. If you need IDPF support, we recommend that you switch to Oracle Linux 8 or 9, and use the RHCK kernel. IDPF driver support was introduced in Oracle Linux versions 8.10.1.* and 9.4.*.

Note that even for Oracle Linux images that support the IDPF driver, the import virtual disk images process doesn't automatically set the corresponding IDPF value in the guestOsFeatures attribute of the image resource. You must set the guestOsFeatures attribute when you launch instances of a VM series that require IDPF driver for networking. To do this, create a new image resource using the gcloud compute image create command with the imported image as the source, and add the IDPF value using the guest-os-feautres parameter.

Other considerations

The following are a few considerations you must keep in mind when using Oracle Linux on Google Cloud:

• The machine families N4, C3, and C4 don't support Oracle Linux images with UEK kernels.
• A Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) boot is required for Compute Engine features such Shielded VMs. If the imported images don't have the (UEFI) bootloader configured correctly, the boot falls back to using Basic Input/Output System (BIOS).
• If the applications you've deployed on Oracle Linux have dependencies on specific features in the guest environment, we recommend that you test and verify that your application is working as intended. The guest environment is installed while importing an image as part of the OS adaptations process. If you see any issues with the application, update your OS configuration with specific emphasis on the following:
  • The OS configuration supporting alias IP ranges. This configuration might also be required by internal passthrough Network Load Balancer.
  • The order of execution of Compute Engine startup scripts.
  • The device name or symbolic link (symlink) of Persistent Disk resources.
  • The automatic expansion of a root partition when the Persistent Disk size is increased.

Operating systems with migration support only

Migrate to Virtual Machines supports migrating VMs running the following operating systems that have reached end of life (EOL), or are not officially supported on Google Cloud. For more information on the OSes supported by Compute Engine, see the full Operating system details. You can migrate VMs running these operating systems to Google Cloud, however, note that not all Compute Engine features might be supported. Contact the Migrate to Virtual Machines support team if you need assistance to migrate these VMs.

OS	Version	Default license	License option	BIOS to UEFI conversion supported	Comments
CentOS	6.0 - 6.10	N/A	N/A	No
	8.0 - 8.4	N/A	N/A	Yes
Debian	8.0 - 8.11	N/A	N/A	No
	9.0 - 9.13	N/A	N/A	No
	10.0 - 10.12	N/A	N/A	No
RHEL	6.0 - 6.9	BYOL	N/A	No
	7.0 - 7.8	BYOL	N/A	No
	7.0 - 7.9 SAP	BYOL	N/A	No
SLES	11 SP3	BYOL	N/A	No
	11 SP4	BYOL	BYOL	No
Ubuntu	14.04	N/A	N/A	No
	16.04	N/A	N/A	No
	18.04	N/A	N/A	No
Windows Client	7 SP1 (x86 and x64)	BYOL	N/A	No
	8 (x86 and x64)	BYOL	N/A	No
	8.1 (x86 and x64)	BYOL	N/A	No
	10 (x86 and x64)	BYOL	N/A	No
Windows Server (Essentials, Standard, and Datacenter).	2008 R2	PAYG	BYOL	No	The Windows 2008 R2, 2012, and 2012 R2 servers have reached end-of-life (EoL). Google Cloud provides limited support for these operating systems. You can upgrade these servers post-migration. For instructions on performing an in-place upgrade post-migration, see Performing an in-place upgrade of Windows Server.
	2012	PAYG	BYOL	Yes (only for Datacenter)
	2012 R2	PAYG	BYOL	Yes (only for Datacenter)

These servers can be upgraded post-migration. For instructions on performing an in-place upgrade post-migration, see Performing an in-place upgrade of Windows Server.

Licensing

Compute Engine supports pay as you go (PAYG) licenses and bring your own licenses (BYOL). The default license type for migrated VMs is assigned by Migrate to Virtual Machines based on the migrated OS. For more information, see the tables in the preceding sections.

If the operating system supports multiple license types, you can change the license type when you configure the target Compute Engine instance. For more information, see Configuring the target for a migrated VM.

Support for encrypted disks

Migrate to Virtual Machines does not support software encrypted disks because they cannot be read without a key. Specifically, you cannot migrate Windows 10 and later systems that use BitLocker drive encryption.

Support for Compute Engine machine series

Migrate to Virtual Machines supports migrating virtual machine instances (VMs) to Compute Engine 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th generation machine series. Migrate to Virtual Machines doesn't support Compute Engine bare metal instances and machine types.

Note that the 3rd generation machine series such as C3, H3, and M3 require non-volatile memory express (NVMe) and Google Virtual NIC (gVNIC) drivers which may not be supported by some older operating systems. If a migrating VM is running an operating system that doesn't support gVNIC or NVMe, Migrate to Virtual Machines blocks you from selecting an incompatible 3rd generation machine series.

For information on different machine types that support NVMe and gVNIC, go to the Machine series comparison section, click Choose VM properties to compare, and select Disk interface type and Network interfaces. For more information on machine types and their requirements, see General-purpose machine family for Compute Engine.