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4 Replies Last post: May 4, 2009 11:00 AM by vmweathers
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How to convert a phycial Red Hat Linux 7.1 to a virual machine - not supported by VMWare converter?

May 4, 2009 1:35 AM

Click to view anderskb's profile Novice anderskb 2 posts since
May 4, 2009

Customer has a phycial server running Red Hat Linux release 7.1 (Seawolf) Kernel 2.4.2-2 on an i686.
According to the release notes for vmware vcenter converter 4.0 this apparently is not supported?

I'm supposed to use the vmware standalone converter on this box and hand over the virtual machine files
to the ESX-support, so that they can create it as a virtual machine. Is there a way to do this, even though
it does'nt say so. I dont have much experience using the vmware converter.

Background: the physical box runs an old but still used internet application using apache. Apparently
the application have some quirks that cannot easyly be implented on another host.

Tags: converter, vmware_converter, linux, red_hat
Reply Re: How to convert a phycial Red Hat Linux 7.1 to a virual machine - not supported by VMWare converter? May 4, 2009 4:32 AM
Click to view aetm's profile Hot Shot aetm 145 posts since
Jul 11, 2007 VMware
Correct, it is not listed as supported and isn't supported.

How about using rsync instead?
Create a VM with the same kind, at least same size hard drive, same type of OS and same kernel on the destination, then create an exclusion list for files and directories you don't want or need copied over (/boot, /dev, /proc etc) and then run the rsync command with the –delete option.
When the Linux distributions are the same most (over 90%) of the files don't get transferred. If the /boot partition is excluded it's important that the two kernels are identical otherwise it will cause problems. If the /boot partition is rsync'd then the initrd file will be wrong and will have to be fixed. You may still want to keep the install discs ready, and man rsync for more options.
Reply Re: How to convert a phycial Red Hat Linux 7.1 to a virual machine - not supported by VMWare converter? May 4, 2009 4:48 AM
Click to view AndreTheGiant's profile Guru AndreTheGiant 5,650 posts since
Aug 28, 2008

Have you try the new converter (the tar.gz version)?

http://www.vmware.com/download/converter/

In any case your distro seen to be too old, so you have to convert manually.

Reply Re: How to convert a phycial Red Hat Linux 7.1 to a virual machine - not supported by VMWare converter? May 4, 2009 5:49 AM
in response to: aetm
Click to view anderskb's profile Novice anderskb 2 posts since
May 4, 2009
Thanks for a precise answer, apparently we must use the rsync method or hide this old box in a corner, so it dont get hit by the virtualization wave. :D
Reply Re: How to convert a phycial Red Hat Linux 7.1 to a virual machine - not supported by VMWare converter? May 4, 2009 11:00 AM
in response to: anderskb
Click to view vmweathers's profile Expert vmweathers 470 posts since
Oct 14, 2008 VMware
With the "rsync" method you'll still have to reinstall the boot loader, patch grub config, recreate the initrd, and patch fstab. You might as well copy everything over rsync if you do this (that is effectively what we do in Linux P2V anyways).
Alternatively you can use the Cold Clone ISO available as part of the Enterprise Converter 3.X versions -- that will also require you to fix the initrd, fstab, and grub by hand.

(If your question has been resolved please mark the answers as "Helpful" or "Correct".)

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