Does a Source Server Have to Connect to the Internet?

The source server must connect to the Internet. It does not matter if it connects to the target server through a Direct Connect connection, VPN connection, or VPC peering connection. In the following figure, the Direct Connect connection, VPN connection, or VPC peering connection between the source and target servers is used only for data flow transmission. The control flow between the source server and SMS needs to be transmitted over the Internet.

If the source server cannot access the Internet, you can configure a proxy server for the source server.

The following figure shows how SMS works.

• Control flow: the interaction process between the source server and SMS

  The interactions include:

  Step 2: The Agent registers itself with SMS and reports the information about the source server to SMS. Then, SMS evaluates migration feasibility of the source server.

  Step 4: The Agent receives and executes the migration commands sent by SMS.

• Data flow: the process of migrating data on the source server

  The data migration includes:

  Step 5: SMS migrates the system disk of the source server.

  Step 6: SMS migrates the data disks of the source server.