VMware Migration Checklist: A Practical Way To Plan And Track

2026-01-05 · Source: Featured Blogs - Forrester · Field: Technology & Digital — Cloud Computing & IT Infrastructure · Depth: Intermediate, quick

Summary

Forrester has released its "VMware Migration Checklist," a self-service guide designed to help infrastructure and operations leaders plan, track, and de-risk VMware environment reassessments. The checklist addresses common pitfalls, such as prematurely selecting a target platform without understanding dependencies or clarifying operational ownership. It advocates for a disciplined approach, encouraging teams to categorize workloads into "maintain," "migrate," or "modernize" based on stability, risk, and business value. The guide covers the entire migration lifecycle, from readiness and discovery to planning, execution, and post-migration operations, emphasizing its utility as a shared artifact across infrastructure, security, application, and finance teams to foster alignment and accelerate decision-making within real-world hybrid environments and constrained timelines.

Key takeaway

For infrastructure and operations leaders facing VMware migration decisions, your team should adopt a structured checklist approach before committing to a target platform. This will help you identify which workloads to maintain, migrate, or modernize, clarify dependencies, and ensure operational readiness post-cutover, thereby reducing risk and avoiding costly missteps in your modernization journey.

Key insights

A structured checklist is crucial for de-risking VMware migrations by ensuring thorough planning and workload categorization.

Principles

• Prioritize planning over platform selection.
• Categorize workloads as maintain, migrate, or modernize.
• Align teams with a shared migration artifact.

Method

The method involves a four-phase lifecycle: readiness/discovery (inventory, dependency mapping), planning/sequencing (prioritization, waves), execution/validation (tracking), and post-migration operations (cost, performance, support).

In practice

• Use the checklist to identify workloads for maintenance.
• Map application and operational dependencies early.
• Define success criteria beyond just "VMs moved."

Topics

• VMware Migration
• Cloud Migration Strategy
• IT Infrastructure
• Workload Categorization
• Migration Planning

Best for: IT Professional, Operations Professional, Executive

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by Featured Blogs - Forrester.