Definitely not domain controllers and I'd add any type of database server, SQL, Oracle, etc. You usually run into corruption with databases. With AD you can run into USN rollback problems.

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=390630

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=579234

I've converted at least 50 windows 2000/2003 servers without any major issues, web servers (IIS), app servers (Websphere/Weblogic), other servers with a variety of applications.

Generally if you do not change the partition size you get better results. This is because it performs a block by block disk copy. If you do change the partition size it does a file by file copy instead.

And of course cold cloning is more reliable then hot cloning because the OS is not active during a cold clone.

I'd like to amend my answer please... After reading some more posts... (Should have done that first) I would not convert an Oracle server.

Thank you.

That Oracle post has me nervous. I guess I'm lucky though, we don't have to many Oracle servers around, and the one's we do are not a good fit to be VM's anyway. I'll stay away from that headache...

Tell me about it. We have a few as well, but are an IBM shop. About every three months Oracle.exe goes out to lunch and the box is un-manageable. I was thinking about getting some kind of work load manager software to put on it just to keep it in check. Something like this... Oracle, Pleeeease leave me 5% CPU so I can get on the server and find out what your problem is... Crazy!!!

I think it's this post...

http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=581348&#581348