# Migrating to Milvus: Tooling, Deployment Choices and Lessons from Real Migrations

> How to move from Elasticsearch or OpenSearch to Milvus or Zilliz Cloud: migration tooling, a real end-to-end walkthrough, deployment choices, and lessons from real customer migrations.

Author: Simon Hearne (https://simonhearne.com/about/)
Published: 2026-09-02
Updated: 2026-09-08
Canonical: https://simonhearne.com/2026/migrating-to-milvus-talk/
Tags: VectorDB, Zilliz, Milvus, video, talk
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0xU3Ks2vXIM
Slides: https://talks.simonhearne.com/2026-09-milvus-migration/

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This is the follow-up to [Milvus 3.0: Closing the Search Gap](/2026/milvus_search_gap/). If you are moving self-managed Milvus rather than Elasticsearch, see [Migrating Self-managed Milvus to Managed Milvus](/2026/migrating-milvus/).

## About the webinar

Milvus 3.0 expands the range of search workloads teams can run in Milvus, with stronger full-text retrieval plus in-engine sorting, aggregation and faceting. In [the previous webinar](/2026/milvus_search_gap/) I explored these search improvements and compared Elasticsearch and Milvus with live side-by-side queries.

In this follow-up session I move from comparison to migration. I show how Zilliz Migration Service helps move data from Elasticsearch or OpenSearch into Milvus or Zilliz Cloud, then walk through a real migration workflow. I also compare Elastic Cloud (ESS) and Zilliz Cloud, discuss deployment options across open-source Milvus, Zilliz Cloud and Zilliz BYOC (Bring Your Own Cloud), and share lessons from customer migrations.

If you use Elasticsearch or OpenSearch today and are considering a migration, this is the walkthrough for you.

## What's covered

- **The migration path.** The major stages and decisions in an Elasticsearch or OpenSearch migration to Milvus or Zilliz Cloud.
- **Migration tooling and a real walkthrough.** How VTS (the open-source migration tool) and Zilliz Migration Service (the managed service built on VTS) move Elasticsearch and OpenSearch data, followed by a real migration workflow end to end.
- **Licensing and commercial tradeoffs.** Licensing models and the commercial considerations behind Elastic Cloud (ESS) and Zilliz Cloud.
- **Deployment choices.** Open-source Milvus, Zilliz Cloud and Zilliz BYOC compared across operating model, control and security needs.
- **Customer migration stories.** Why real teams moved, how they approached the migration, and what they learned along the way.
- **Live AMA.** Around 20 minutes of migration, architecture and evaluation questions.

Presented as a [Zilliz webinar](https://zilliz.com/event/migrating-from-elasticsearch-opensearch-to-milvus) on 2 September 2026.