Frontier Outrider — VMware Migration

Frontier Outrider: VMware-to-OpenStack migration assessment and topology-aware planning for VitroAI, available through Remuda as the outrider-assess MCP server.

Frontier Outrider assesses VMware workloads for migration to VitroAI OpenStack and builds topology-aware migration plans. Its service, outriderd, provides assessment over MCP at /mcp/assess, using real VMware and OpenStack clients. That endpoint is registered in Remuda, the platform MCP registry and router, as the MCP server outrider-assess: five tools, token-protected, with every call audited. This path is verified on a live platform namespace (ns-2). Outrider’s dry-run planning selects a matching OpenStack flavor for each VM and maps its networks, so network mapping gaps are surfaced as plan warnings before anything moves.

What Outrider does

Capability What it provides
Assessment over MCP outriderd serves /mcp/assess, backed by real VMware and OpenStack clients.
Access through Remuda The assessment endpoint is forwarded through Remuda as outrider-assess, with five tools: outrider_inventory_list, outrider_vm_detail, outrider_assess_vm, outrider_run_status and outrider_run_events. Calls require a token and each call is audited.
Dry-run planning Per-VM plans with source configuration, matched flavor, network mappings and transfer pipeline. Requests run as dry runs by default.
Job tracking Every job state change is recorded in Outrider’s job store with a timestamped event log.

Planning details

  • Source configuration: a plan records the VM’s vCPU, memory, disks (size, provisioning, controller, datastore, VMDK path) and NICs with MAC addresses.
  • Flavor matching: the smallest OpenStack flavor that meets the source vCPU and RAM is selected, with boot-from-volume flavors preferred. If none fits, the plan includes a recommended flavor specification.
  • Network mapping: each source network is mapped to an OpenStack network by exact name, or to an explicitly requested target network. Unmapped networks are listed as plan warnings.
  • Demo mode: the planning logic can also run against built-in sample inventory.

Interfaces

  • MCP: outrider-assess through Remuda, for platform MCP clients.
  • outriderd API: a REST API (/migrations) and a JSON-RPC 2.0 endpoint (/jsonrpc) with six methods: vmware_migrate_vm, vmware_migrate_plan, vmware_migrate_status, vmware_migrate_cancel, vmware_migrate_retry and vmware_migrate_rollback. See the API Reference.

Migration Monitor

The Migration Monitor (migration-dashboard:v1.2.0 at migration.vitro.lan) is the platform’s migration UI. It runs over the migration-api service (migration-api:v1.1.0, under /api/migration) and the VMware and OpenStack MCP servers. The Migration Monitor also hosts the Outrider Agent panel. Its current behavior is described under Current scope.

Outrider Agent

The Outrider Agent is a read-only migration specialist on the Federal Frontier harness, running on a local Gemma 4 26B model so no data leaves the customer’s hardware. In the Migration Monitor panel it produces readiness briefings, wave plans, approval packet drafts for one VM, failure diagnoses from Outrider job events, and chat answers over the estate, with every fact cited to a tool call. Its Keycloak identity holds only the migration-viewer role, and a person approves every move.

Getting Started

  1. Architecture — migration pipeline design, planning steps and job states
  2. API Reference — the outrider-assess MCP surface and the outriderd REST and JSON-RPC methods
  3. Outrider Agent — read-only migration specialist, tasks, guardrails and measured results

Current scope

  • Disk transfer, guest conversion and instance launch are not on the platform yet. Outrider jobs produce plans; a job submitted with dry_run=false ends in the failed state.
  • Planning reads inventory through the platform VMware MCP server. On the VitroAI FMC, that MCP server is backed by a vcsim simulator, not a live vCenter.
  • The Migration Monitor currently runs a simulated migration against a simulated vCenter (a vcsim shim).
  • That simulation copies no disk data. The target is a new stock ubuntu-22.04 instance named migrated-<vm>, not the source VM’s disk.
  • Warm migration is not implemented. Plans use cold mode.
  • The Outrider Agent’s evaluation estate is a vcsim simulator, not a real vCenter.
  • Outrider Agent failure diagnosis was scored on recorded Outrider job runs, not on a real vCenter.