Hey guys,
The preliminary testing was a success!
I created a BartPE (bootable Windows XP environment) that injects the
LSILogic or BusLogic SCSI drivers in to a newly Ghosted VM. I got the
plugin from a thread off the VMTN board.
Basically, I Ghosted a physical XP machine to a VM (on ESX 2.5.2), peer2peer, disk2disk,
then used the plugin on the BartPE disk to hack the registry and install
the LSILogic SCSI driver into the VM.
IMPORTANT NOTE!!!
I rebooted the VM before injecting the LSILogic driver and got a
BSOD...which is to be expected. After the driver was injected, there
was no more BSOD!!! Later, I was able to install the VMware Tools inside the VM to
complete the process.
This method is alot faster and easier than the current P2V method from
VMWare, and best of all, it's FREE! To my knowledge, all you really need is a licensed
copy of Ghost and a XP license to pull this off before you can legally create and use the
disc. What are we talking here...maybe $200 for unlimited P2V's!
I boot the physical box with the BartPE cd and boot the VM from the BartPE iso sitting in the /vmimages folder on the ESX server. Launch Ghost 8 on both, make the physical box the peer master and the VM the peer slave, Ghost disk to disk, inject the LSILogic driver when the Ghosting process is done, reboot, and finish by installing the VMware Tools inside the VM.
What do you guys think? Can the process be improved?
Chris
The preliminary testing was a success!
I created a BartPE (bootable Windows XP environment) that injects the
LSILogic or BusLogic SCSI drivers in to a newly Ghosted VM. I got the
plugin from a thread off the VMTN board.
Basically, I Ghosted a physical XP machine to a VM (on ESX 2.5.2), peer2peer, disk2disk,
then used the plugin on the BartPE disk to hack the registry and install
the LSILogic SCSI driver into the VM.
IMPORTANT NOTE!!!
I rebooted the VM before injecting the LSILogic driver and got a
BSOD...which is to be expected. After the driver was injected, there
was no more BSOD!!! Later, I was able to install the VMware Tools inside the VM to
complete the process.
This method is alot faster and easier than the current P2V method from
VMWare, and best of all, it's FREE! To my knowledge, all you really need is a licensed
copy of Ghost and a XP license to pull this off before you can legally create and use the
disc. What are we talking here...maybe $200 for unlimited P2V's!
I boot the physical box with the BartPE cd and boot the VM from the BartPE iso sitting in the /vmimages folder on the ESX server. Launch Ghost 8 on both, make the physical box the peer master and the VM the peer slave, Ghost disk to disk, inject the LSILogic driver when the Ghosting process is done, reboot, and finish by installing the VMware Tools inside the VM.
What do you guys think? Can the process be improved?
Chris
