Cold migration is recommended for converting MS Exchange servers, database servers such as Oracle or MS SQL, and other servers on which data is dynamically changed when a server is powered on to preserve the data consistency.
If the data on disks remains static, you can perform hot migration. Cold migration of physical servers can be performed if you boot from the live CD and run the process of converting a physical machine including disks drives and the operating system. In the current example, VMware Converter 6. The source physical machine is running Windows Server Step 1: Source System. Select a source machine. Since a physical Windows Server must be converted, select Powered on , select Remote Windows machine as the source type, and specify the IP address or DNS name, the user name, and password.
Then, hit View source details. VMware vCenter Converter Standalone agent must be deployed on the remote Windows machine in this case.
You should select whether to uninstall the agent files when import succeeds automatically or not. Then, hit Yes to continue. Once the agent is installed, you can view source details. Notice that VMware Converter 6.
Hit Close , then hit Next in the Source System window. Step 2: Destination System. As a physical machine running Windows Server used in this example must be converted to a VM running on an ESXi host, VMware Infrastructure virtual machine must be selected in VMware Converter for this step; select the destination server. Step 3: Destination Virtual Machine.
Step 4: Destination Location. Select the ESXi host, cluster or resource pool that is connected to the selected Datacenter and select the datastore available on that ESXi host. There must be enough free space on the selected datastore. If the modern operating system is installed on a source machine, you can select the latest available virtual machine version hardware version for the destination VM. The virtual machine version that can be selected also depends on a version of the destination ESXi host.
Step 5: Options. This step allows you to select the following options for the destination VM:. Data to copy. Select which disks and volumes you want to copy. You can select thick or thin provisioning type for destination virtual disks you should select advanced view and resize volumes if needed.
In this example, a physical disk that contains two volumes is converted to a thin provisioned virtual disk. It is recommended that you tick the checkboxes:. You can select the number of virtual processors, processor cores, virtual disk controllers, and memory size. Select networks to which virtual network adapters of the VM must be connected. On the Source Services tab, you can select which running services on the source Windows machine to stop before starting P2V conversion with VMware Converter.
Uninstall all unnecessary software — Before P2V, uninstall any software you won't use on the system once it's a VM. This could be any diagnostics, monitoring software related to the physical server, or other software. Disable services — There might be services that you want to disable, such as services related to disk activities, as those services will slow down the conversion process.
Chose only disks you want to convert and the right size — During the wizard that you launch before the conversion process, you have the possibility to select the disks you want to convert and then also. Downgrade virtual machine version — This is possible via the vCenter Converter, within the workflow.
You might be in a situation where you have received a VM from your software developer or an external company and this VM was saved in a newer format than your current VMware vSphere environment, so the VM cannot run. You must downgrade the VM hardware first. You can do this through the V2V reconfiguration process. Option to "Connect to another server" — This option allows you to connect to another converter server remotely and manage the jobs that this "node" is doing.
Imagine you have a lot of conversion tasks to do. Instead of using only a single node, a single machine for all conversion tasks, you can run many conversion tasks in parallel.
You can create a bunch of converter server nodes and launch multiple conversion tasks at the same time. Some AV software might not allow you to do so. In this case, it's better to uninstall and then reinstall it once you have the VM up and running after the conversion.
Save your IP configuration — Before the conversion starts, you might want to save your IP configuration. After-conversion tasks — Yes, there are some tasks to do after the conversion as well. You can do without, but to get the best possible performance, you might want to check that as well.
Remove "ghosted devices " — These are devices that are invisible in the device manager Windows VMs only but were brought in with the conversion process.
If there are migration problems, use local installation — If your conversion fails for no reason, install the converter software directly on the source system. You might experience migration issues or network latency between the converter server and converter worker. In this situation, it might help. Install the converter locally and "push" the bits into your virtual infrastructure or ESXi host.
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View this "Best Answer" in the replies below ». You have many options. Savingprivateryan wrote: We did a P2V conversion few months ago block level for a Windows server. I mean would the V2V conversion speed would have any impact on the following options: 1 Conversion through vCenter 2 dissociate the ESXi hosts from vCenter and select the ESXi hosts directly for source and target. We selected the block level copy as we found that block level copy was much faster compared to file copy.
The VM was working fine for past 3 months. Now we have time to take the VM offline for 3 days, so planning to do the V2V conversion this time and select the file level copy. Savingprivateryan wrote: da Beast wrote: What did you use for the P2V? I did not get this. Savingprivateryan wrote: da Beast wrote: You actually used VMware converter - it was just bundled up in vCenter as a "feature" - it is still the same process.
I asked what you used for the P2V - you responded with vCenter. I had assumed there was a plug-in that would convert your physical systems - I was telling you that it is the same technology in the offline convert doing the work. Savingprivateryan wrote: It would be nice if VMWare Converter has an option to give a correct estimated time for the conversion when we start the file level copy by shrinking the target disk size. Sorry for asking dummy questions.
How to find this , any tools? Savingprivateryan wrote: da Beast wrote: Is your data all on the same part of the disk data together at the front? Several ways to do this. Since we are doing weekend, there shouldn't be any CPU or network usage. In face during this V2V conversion we stopped the backups also to run, just to make sure the backup veeam does not take up network resources.
Savingprivateryan wrote: da Beast wrote: Is your network idle isolated network? Then you have made your network as fast as possible.
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