You have the mandate. Leadership wants a plan to reduce VMware exposure, Nutanix is on the shortlist, and someone just asked you for a timeline. The problem is that a timeline without a tested process is just a guess. And guesses do not survive contact with production workloads, change windows, or finance reviews.
A VMware to Nutanix migration is not a weekend project. It touches storage, networking, application owners, compliance, and the people who get paged when something breaks. According to Gartner's 2025 Market Guide for Server Virtualization Platforms, cost pressures will drive 70% of enterprise VMware customers to migrate 50% of their virtual workloads by 2028. The organizations that succeed treat the first 12 weeks as a proof of concept, not a commitment to migrate everything. They use that window to validate assumptions, expose risks, and build a business case grounded in their own data.
This playbook gives you a week-by-week structure for running a migration POC that delivers a defensible decision. By week 12, you will know what migrates cleanly, what needs remediation, and what the real costs look like. That is the foundation for a program that scales.
Why a proof of concept matters more than a proposal
The pressure to move fast is real. Broadcom's acquisition of VMware has introduced licensing changes that caught many organizations off guard. Renewal quotes are arriving with numbers that do not match last year's budget. Some teams are seeing increases of 300% or more. The instinct is to accelerate the exit. According to Gartner's 2025 Market Guide, cost pressures will drive 70% of enterprise VMware customers to migrate 50% of their virtual workloads by 2028.
But speed without visibility creates different problems. Gartner analysts estimate that large-scale VMware migrations involving 2,000 or more VMs take 18 to 48 months to complete. A rushed migration can strand critical workloads, break dependencies that were never documented, and generate emergency change requests that erode trust with the business. The pilot migration approach lets you move deliberately. You learn what works in your environment before you commit resources to a full program.
A proof of concept also gives you leverage. When you can show leadership that 50 VMs migrated successfully with zero unplanned downtime, the conversation shifts from "can we do this" to "how fast can we scale." That is a much better position to be in when asking for budget.
The real blockers nobody mentions in the sales deck
Every migration has friction. The question is whether you discover it during planning or during a 2 AM incident call. Here are the blockers that surface repeatedly in enterprise VMware to Nutanix projects.
First, inventory quality. Most organizations do not have a single source of truth for their virtual estate. Data lives in vCenter, in CMDBs that have not been updated since the last audit, and in spreadsheets that one engineer maintains. When these sources disagree, teams waste weeks reconciling before they can even define scope.
Second, dependency mapping. A VM rarely exists in isolation. It talks to databases, authentication services, file shares, and monitoring agents. If you migrate the VM without migrating or validating its dependencies, you get a system that boots but does not function. Discovering this in production is expensive.
Third, stakeholder alignment. The infrastructure team may be ready to move, but the application owner has a release freeze. Finance wants to wait until after quarter close. Security needs to review the new network topology. These constraints are legitimate, and ignoring them creates political debt that slows down future migration phases.
What a stalled migration costs you
Imagine it is two weeks before your first scheduled cutover. The project manager asks for a status update, and the answers are vague. The inventory spreadsheet has 1,200 rows, but nobody is confident it reflects reality. Three application owners have not responded to emails asking about their maintenance windows. The storage team flagged a VM with 6 TB of data that will take longer to transfer than the cutover window allows.
The cutover gets pushed. Then it gets pushed again. Each delay has a cost. The team loses momentum. Leadership starts asking whether the project is viable. The VMware renewal deadline gets closer, and suddenly you are negotiating from weakness instead of strength.
This pattern repeats across industries. The root cause is almost always the same: the migration was planned around tools and timelines instead of around risk visibility and stakeholder readiness. A structured proof of concept breaks this pattern by forcing early answers to hard questions. Forrester's VMware Migration Checklist emphasizes this point, recommending that teams categorize workloads intentionally before selecting target platforms.
Your VMware to Nutanix migration in three moves
Move 1: Build a single source of truth
Before you migrate anything, you need to know what you have. This means connecting to vCenter, pulling configuration data, and normalizing it against your CMDB and application inventory. The goal is a unified view that shows every VM, its resource consumption, its dependencies, and its owner.
This is not a one-time export. The data needs to stay current as configurations change. Automation matters here. Manual reconciliation does not scale, and stale data leads to bad decisions.
Move 2: Define bundles that match how you deploy
VMs do not migrate one at a time in a vacuum. They migrate in groups that reflect application boundaries, business units, or infrastructure tiers. These bundles become your unit of planning. Each bundle has a readiness score, a set of dependencies, and a list of stakeholders who need to approve the move.
Thinking in bundles also simplifies wave planning. Instead of scheduling 500 individual VMs, you schedule 25 bundles across five waves. The granularity is manageable, and the accountability is clear.
Move 3: Make risk visible before it becomes an incident
Every bundle carries risk. Some VMs run end-of-life operating systems that Nutanix AHV does not support. Some have storage configurations that require conversion. Some depend on services that have not been validated on the target platform.
The goal is to surface these risks during planning, not during cutover. Dashboards that show readiness scores, remediation progress, and dependency closure give teams the information they need to prioritize work and avoid surprises.
VirtualReady in practice
ReadyWorks VirtualReady is designed for exactly this workflow. It connects to vCenter, Nutanix Prism, ServiceNow, and other data sources on day one. The platform normalizes inventory, scores data quality, and highlights conflicts that need resolution.
In the first two weeks of a typical engagement, teams use VirtualReady to define bundle structures that mirror their deployment reality. The platform flags VMs over 5 TB, identifies end-of-life guest operating systems, and maps dependencies that would otherwise stay hidden in tribal knowledge.
By week three, the first risk view is published. Stakeholders can see which bundles are ready, which need remediation, and which are blocked by external dependencies. This visibility changes the conversation from "when will it be done" to "what do we need to unblock."
Here's what VirtualReady does:
- Ingests data from vCenter, Nutanix Prism, CMDBs, and ticketing systems
- Flags compatibility issues like unsupported OS versions and oversized VMs
- Scores bundle readiness based on dependency closure and stakeholder approval
- Models migration duration against network capacity to set realistic cutover windows
- Generates audit trails that support compliance reviews
Nutanix Move and the orchestration layer
Nutanix Move handles the actual transfer of VMs from VMware to Nutanix AHV. It is a capable tool for the mechanical work of migration. What it does not do is manage the program around that migration: the stakeholder coordination, the wave scheduling, the rollback criteria, the executive reporting.
VirtualReady extends Nutanix Move by adding orchestration. Automated workflows trigger cutover tasks when readiness criteria are met. Stakeholder notifications go out on schedule. Dashboards update in real time so leadership can track progress without interrupting the team. The result is a migration that runs on process, not heroics.
Common failure patterns and how to avoid them
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Incomplete inventory: Teams start migrating before they know what they have. Fix this by connecting all data sources in week one and validating coverage before defining scope.
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Stale dependency maps: Dependencies documented two years ago may not reflect current state. Fix this by polling application owners and validating connections programmatically.
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Invisible KPIs: If leadership cannot see progress, they assume there is none. Fix this by publishing dashboards that show bundle readiness, remediation burn down, and cutover success rates.
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Overreliance on point-to-point integrations: Connecting vCenter to Nutanix Move is necessary but not sufficient. Fix this by using an orchestration layer that coordinates across all systems involved in the migration.
Proof of concept plan
The goal is a working migration of representative workloads and a defensible business case in 12 weeks. Scope should be tight: 50 to 100 VMs across three to five bundles that reflect different application types and risk profiles.
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Weeks 1 to 2: Install VirtualReady, connect to vCenter and Nutanix Prism, validate inventory coverage. Define initial bundle structures. Publish the first risk view showing readiness scores and blockers.
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Weeks 3 to 5: Stand up orchestration workflows. Define approval gates at the bundle level. Establish rollback criteria. Build dashboards for stakeholder visibility. Begin remediation on top blockers identified in week two.
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Weeks 6 to 8: Execute pilot cutovers on low-risk bundles. Measure actual migration duration against modeled estimates. Validate application functionality post-migration. Tune runbooks based on lessons learned.
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Weeks 9 to 12: Expand to medium-risk bundles or hold at MVP depending on results. Finalize the one-page business case with conservative, target, and aggressive scenarios. Prepare the executive readout that summarizes findings, risks, and recommendations.
Success criteria: Bundle readiness targets met on schedule. Cutovers completed within planned windows. Application functionality validated post-migration. Rollbacks rare and controlled. Business case survives finance review.
One next step
If you want to see how VirtualReady maps your VMware estate in the first week, try a VM Accelerator demo for free.
FAQ
What is a migration proof of concept and why does it matter?
A proof of concept is a time-boxed pilot that validates migration assumptions using real workloads. It reduces risk by exposing blockers before full commitment.
How long does a VMware to Nutanix migration take?
Timelines vary by scope, but a proof of concept typically runs 8 to 12 weeks. Full migrations for large enterprises can take 18 months or more.
What are the biggest risks in a VMware to Nutanix migration?
Incomplete inventory, undocumented dependencies, and stakeholder misalignment cause most delays. Structured discovery and orchestration address these risks.
Do I need VirtualReady if I already have Nutanix Move?
Nutanix Move handles VM transfer. VirtualReady adds inventory analysis, dependency mapping, wave planning, and orchestration that complex migrations require.
Which KPIs should I track during migration?
Bundle readiness, remediation burn down, dependency closure, cutover success rate, rollback count, and post-migration application health.
