For most cicumstances, the Migration Assistant provides ample support for migrating from vRealize Automation 7.x to

VMware Aria Automation

8. However, for some customers migration using onboarding is recommended. For onboarding use cases see Migrating to

VMware Aria Automation

using the onboarding feature in the section below. Migrating using the Migration Assistant is recommended for:

Networking
The migration assistant has advanced capabilities for identifying deployment constructs, specifically for networking. The migration assistant supports the migration of: all network objects in all clouds, IP management with native IPAM, load balancers, and security groups. Onboarding does not support this functionality.
VCT assignment to workloads
The migration assistant can assign the blueprints to the workloads being migrated. The workloads are compatible with the VCT in
VMware Aria Automation
8. Onboarding does not support this functionality.
Custom properties and property groups (limited) are automatically recognized
The migration assistant automatically recognizes any custom properties or property groups used in blueprints and workloads and applies them to the workloads in
VMware Aria Automation
8 to maintain the functionality and expected behavior of the custom properties.
Capabilities of migration assistant that are not present in onboarding
The Migration Assistant includes many capabilities that onboarding does not. For example, support for migrating deployment history, retaining deployment metadata (such as names, descriptions, lease expirations, and ownership), migrating custom resources, migrating custom forms, lease policy compatibility, retaining the vRA 7.x consumption model, etc.
Cloudzone mapping and compatibility with limits
When workloads are migrated using the Migration Assistant they are automatically placed in the right cloudzone. They are also compliant with the limits specified as the project-cloudzone assignment.
Scale out support
In
VMware Aria Automation
8, there are no day 2 actions for scale out of machines. To overcome this,
VMware Aria Automation
uses interative deployments where the VCT parameters are changed and then re-applied to the provisioned deployment to scale it out. Onboarding does not support this functionality.

As an alternative to using the Migration Assistant, you can use the onboarding feature to migrate certain vRealize Automation 7.x workloads to 8.x. Migration using Onboarding is limited to machine and connected objects (disks and networks) only. Onboarding also allows you onboard one or many machines to

Automation Assembler

using a single onboarding plan. Migrating using the onboarding feature is recommended for:

Side by side VCF migration
Onboarding is recommended, if you want to migrate VCF 3.x to 4.x alongside migrating vRealize Automation 7.x to 8.x. To migrate, set up a separate VCF 4 stack and migrate workloads with HCX. After, you can onboard these workloads to the new
VMware Aria Automation
8 instance that is deployed in the VCF 4 stack.
vRealize Automation changes in deployment structure
Onboarding is recommended if you want to change how
VMware Aria Automation
is consumed in 8.x compared to 7.x. For example, if you want to consolidate business groups into fewer projects, reconstruct blueprints, ignore any non-relevant content present in 7.x, update existing processes to new methods, etc.
Make changes to deployments such as update name or add custom properties
Workload onboarding does not connect to vRealize Automation 7.x and does not have access to vRA 7 constructs and metadata such as blueprints and custom properties. It only operates on inventory discovered by
VMware Aria Automation
8.
Onboarding is recommended if you want to make changes to your deployment metadata such as renaming it or adding additional custom properties.
Require changes in production vRealize Automation 7.x
Onboarding is recommended if you do not want to make any changes to your 7.x environment in production to address incompatibilities reported by the migration assistant. For example, if you are unable to unpublish content you no longer use, if you make changes in blueprints, update vRO workflows, update entitlements, update custom day 2 actions, etc.
Migrate from vRealize Automation 7.x to
VMware Aria Automation
Cloud
Onboarding is recommended if you want to migrate your vRA 7.x on-prem environment to
VMware Aria Automation
Cloud. Currently, the Migration Assistant does not support this migration path use case.

For additional information on bulk

VMware Aria Automation

8 onboarding, see

VMware Aria Automation

8 bulk onboarding.

For more information on onboarding, see What are onboarding plans.