Introduction

Oracle Cloud VMware Solution (OCVS) on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI) has emerged as a game-changer for organizations committed to modernization without compromise.

Imagine migrating your trusted VMware workloads to the cloud, yet maintaining the autonomy, performance, and control you’ve cultivated on-premises for years. That’s the promise OCVS extends—a combination of technological reliability and strategic flexibility that lets IT leaders sleep a little easier at night.

This story is rooted in lived expertise. As director of infrastructure and databases, I have spent nearly three decades traversing every rung in the IT ladder—from programmer to DBA, cloud architect to director. Over the years, a single lesson stands out: the right roadmap to the cloud is always individual. Crafting success begins by listening—to your systems, your users, and your partners—and then tailoring solutions with both technical rigor and business empathy. Allowing input from all aspects of the organization, then molding it into the plan, is key to corporate buy-in.

At the heart of this journey is a vital distinction: OCVS is not a hands-off, managed VMware service. Rather, it is a thoughtfully engineered, customer-directed extension of your on-premises VMware landscape.

In practical terms, this means you stay in the driver’s seat for all administrative tasks. Oracle provides the hardware muscle and the complete VMware software stack—vSphere, vSAN, NSX, vCenter, and HCX—but you retain final say over architecture, configuration, backups, and operational routines. The result? Businesses can replicate familiar management practices in the cloud, knowing that control and adaptability will never be out of reach. This will allow your technical team to stay familiar with the technology as you slowly dip your toe into the cloud experience. One of the key drivers of companies not moving faster to the cloud is their team’s resistance to adopt it due to being uncomfortable with the change.

From a technical perspective, OCVS’s architecture reflects both familiarity and innovation. Enterprises can deploy their established sizing strategies, apply proven network topologies, and maintain the same high standards for performance and security. Yet, these practices are enhanced by the vast scalability, redundancy, and agility of Oracle’s global cloud backbone. The cloud isn’t just where systems move, it’s where they mature.

With the constant challenge of forecasting your resource needs when running on-premises, the cloud offers you quick access to additional resources at the click of a button. Do you need to order disks or a new server? The standard answer used to be: it will take 6-8 weeks to get it, and then you have to set up and configure it.

Well, in the cloud, you get approval for the budget, then click on what resource you need and provision it. It may be disks or servers or more memory, but the common tasks no longer take weeks or months to achieve.

When it comes to migration, one size definitely does not fit all. 

OCVS supports multiple strategies to help you reach the cloud efficiently and with minimal disruption. For teams with straightforward requirements, vMotion makes it possible to transfer workloads between vCenter servers live, assuming the correct network connectivity is established.

More intricate or large-scale migrations can leverage VMware HCX—its robust toolset orchestrates the transfer, translating complex on-prem landscapes into dynamic, cloud-based operations.

There are, however, important caveats. Compatibility is king: systems must be on compatible versions or, where gaps exist, teams should be prepared to reinstall or migrate data to supported configurations. So why are organizations making this leap? For many, it’s about best-fit support for mission-critical applications. OCVS on OCI is optimized for running Oracle’s most essential offerings, including EBS, OBIA, and Oracle databases, but also integrates seamlessly with third-party tools like EDI, CyberSource, and Bartender. But performance and cost are often the clinchers: Leveraging Oracle’s Database Cloud Services, enterprises achieve significant operational gains—processing speeds increase, overhead drops by 50% compared to similar Azure configurations, hardware maintenance costs fall by 30%, and end-to-end process efficiency rises by 40%. These aren’t just technical gains; they’re business enablers.

A successful migration to OCI with OCVS is often best staged in two deliberate phases, each designed to maximize stability and benefit. Phase 1 focuses on a “lift and shift”—moving on-premises VMs and databases to OCVS nearly as-is. Notably, organizations often maintain the original VM names and IP assignments at this stage, leveraging standby database techniques for continuity, and sizing hardware to mirror on-premises configurations while relying on OCI’s endlessly scalable block storage.

Phase 2 then pivots toward deeper cloud-native integration. Using Oracle’s Migration Utility, non-database VMs are transformed from OCVS instances to native OCI virtual machines. This involves creating images, shifting VMs between virtual cloud networks, and introducing new IP ranges. For this step to succeed, business applications must be flexible enough to route by fully qualified domain names—sidestepping any disruptions triggered by IP changes. Supporting this transition, Oracle’s sizing tools generate a new bill of materials, precisely mapping hardware needs and CPU allocations. Finally, databases shift onto Oracle DBCS or Exadata, taking full advantage of scalable flex configurations to anticipate peak loads and business needs well into the future.

Of course, large projects bring their share of challenges. For us, this migration was no exception. Upgrading VMware vSphere for OCVS compatibility, wrangling network design and firewall rule complexity, and discovering that initially provisioned hosts were undersized—all were part of the process. In fact, scaling up host capacity by 25% proved essential after the first deployment.

A pivotal lesson: limited cloud migration expertise on the customer’s side can and should be offset through targeted upskilling, vigorous training, and, when appropriate, strategic partnerships with outside experts. Investing in your people is as important as investing in your platform.

Project management, too, requires vigilance and finesse. Tight schedules, conflicting priorities (across production support, parallel projects, and the migration itself), and the juggling act of international coordination can stretch even veteran teams. Maintaining momentum required synchronized team meetings, careful calendar management, and openness to shifting plans when competing business demands arose. Getting everyone on the same page is the core of a successful project management approach which requires complete buy-in from the top levels of every company. Inevitably there will be some aspects of the business that will not be preferring the various impacts that they may have to absorb in their operations to ensure the successful execution of your migration.

Documentation, so often an afterthought, quickly became a priority. With rapid architectural and network changes unfolding, comprehensive, up-to-date documentation was not just useful—it was essential. By continuously improving records, the team facilitated faster onboarding, improved process standardization, reduced the incidence of recurring errors, and built a foundation for smoother knowledge transfer going forward.

From these real-world challenges emerged powerful lessons for future. Detailed, flexible, and forward-looking project plans are non-negotiable—they must allow for the unforeseen, offer buffers for timing conflicts, and provide multiple fallback strategies. Before “go-live,” rehearsals in non-production environments are vital for surfacing the inevitable surprises and testing rollback playbooks in a low-risk context.

Communication is another pillar of success—ongoing updates, transparent pathways, and regular touchpoints keep all stakeholders moving in sync. Engaging closely with Oracle’s Customer Success Team and ISP partners enabled rapid troubleshooting, tailored technical guidance, and cultivated a spirit of partnership. This network of support, woven throughout the journey, smoothed transitions and increased confidence when the unexpected occurred.

Testing, too, demands a proactive mindset. Regular integration tests in mirrored environments allowed the team to identify failures, confirm network routes and external communications, and fine-tune systems ahead of the final cutover. This patient, deliberate approach grounded the migration in reliability, not just speed. The testing plan needs to include all aspects of the potentially impacted integrations, application functionality as well as validation of the data that is going through the testing process matches what is expected as an outcome.

The results of these collective efforts were transformative. Once live on OCI, our organization saw Oracle BI ETL runtimes drop from ten hours to just three, allowing a 70% leap in efficiency. After completing Phase One, over 99% uptime was achieved and, just as importantly, the groundwork for future scalability and DR innovation was laid. Enhanced backup routines and disaster recovery protocols provided improved recovery points and time objectives—turning the cloud migration into a catalyst for broader, strategic gains. IT resources could now be channeled away from endless maintenance, freeing teams to focus on innovation, proactive security, and new business initiatives. The cloud allows you to dial up your systems performance with some of the most advanced options on the market. From disks speeds to memory options at the click of the button, you can provide the right solution at the right time.

As with every project, when looking back, there are always opportunities to have done a better job in one or two areas. With a little extra thought and care in advance, we could have headed off some issues sooner. Here are some of the situations we experienced that in hindsight could have been improved, and what we learned:

• Detailed planning allows for flexibility and more quick decision-making to keep the project moving forward.
• Target dates are required to hit multiple milestones. Due to a business conflict that may unexpectedly arise, multiple dates must be planned out in case a fallback date is required - without compromising your end date for delivery. 
• Always have a rollback plan even if you don’t have time to calculate one into the plan immediately, you will inevitably be asked to explain the rollback plan and how it fits into your downtime window or implementation window.
• Practice the execution plan multiple times to ensure you have the ability to roll it out with confidence.
• Always set up your communications cadence in advance. All stakeholders must be informed if you have any roadblocks or, on the other hand, are on-plan as expected. Stakeholders who are surprised by a status update means you failed to communicate appropriately.

As your organization maps its own journey to Oracle Cloud Infrastructure and OCVS, take these lived lessons to heart: the real value of migration isn't just technical, it's the organizational wisdom, agility, and resilience built along the way. Every challenge, be it technical complexity or project scheduling chaos, becomes an opportunity for growth. Chart your course with care, remain nimble, communicate deeply, and trust that, with the right plan and the right partners, modernization unlocks new vistas of potential. Embrace the transformation that every company eventually goes through and learn to see the bumps in the road as opportunities to improve your execution plans. Show your team that perfection isn’t the goal, and that progress into the digital future is the desired outcome. Be brave enough to accept change, even when it makes you uncomfortable. Remember that by being part of the journey, you are helping to secure success for both your company and yourself.