Considerations on Exchange P2V conversions

[MKguy]

What are some basic best practices and caveats that I should take into account when converting a physical Exchange server to a VM on ESX 3.5U2 with VC 2.5U2?

I thought about the following things in a hot-cloning scenario:

1. Is defragmenting the disks and maybe zeroing out unused space with a tool like sdelete prior to the conversion going to be helpful or benefiting the speed of the conversion (in general)?

2. Servers installed with Dell Server Management Software have an EISA utility partition as the first partition on the disk. The OS resides on partition 2. Is this partition retained by the conversion or should i add another entry to the boot.ini with the OS on partition 1 prior to the conversion?

3. Will I have to worry about any corrupted data if i shutdown all Exchange services prior to the conversion? What is about changes that are made on the physical machine during/shortly after the conversion while it is yet to be shutdowned and the converted VM is yet to be powered on? Of course i don't plan on changing anything major during that time, but the physical host that is to be turned off will inevitably be a little more recent than the VM converted a few minutes ago.

4. Should Dell hardware management agents be uninstalled prior to the conversion or after it's done and while the VM is running?

5. After the conversion is done and the physical server is shutdown/disconnected from the network I plan on firing up the VM without network connectivity in order to let it detect new hardware and reboot, uninstall hardware management agents and reboot (if not done prior) install VMware tools and reboot. Only if that all is successful and running smoothly, I plan to shutdown, connect the vNIC and power the VM on. Anything wrong with proceeding in that manner?

6. The physical machine has 4 logical CPUs and I plan to assign the VM 2 vCPUs. Anything to take into account about that? It should still be the same multi CPU HAL, right?

7. VMware converter does not retain the MAC address of the physical host and assigns a new MAC to the VM, right? Should I bother changing the MAC in the vmx or by using the VI client? There isn't any static ARP stuff on the network or applications depending on this MAC but oh well...

8. Could cold cloning be a better choice in this scenario? How much work is it to get the drivers for server hardware working with the boot CD or is maybe some of the major stuff included?

That's all i can think about at the moment...

Any input or criticism to this procedure and additional hints are much appreciated.

[dconvery]

Welcome to the forums!

I'll start by answering your questions as best as I can.

1. Yes, defrag and sedelet will assist with speeding up your conversion, especially if you are planning a cold clone.

2. You should be able to deselect the EISA partition within the wizard. But I would definitely add an entry in boot.ini to point to partition 1

3. I recommend that you actually stop and DISABLE all transactional services. Disable them so they don't start on the new VM until you are ready. Once the conversion is complete, take the source (physical) machine off line. Just disconnect the NIC if you can. Since the services that define the server's role are shut down, it won't matter about any slight changes that are made. You ARE correct, however, the VM will not reflect any changes after the conversion is complete.

4. The agents and related software should be uninstalled AFTER conversion. Don't forget: your backout plan is to bring the source back on line.

5. This is a perfect plan. You may want to actually practise this in a lab if you have the facilities, so you have a good plan of action.

6. You are correct about the HAL. You will need to change the number or vCPUs in the VM settings prior to power-on. You should also remove serial, parallel and USB ports while in the settings.

7. Don't worry about the MAC - an new NIC will be discovered. You WILL need to remove the old NIC from the device manager before applying a new IP address.

8. Cold Cloning is what I call the final choice. It is like imaging a machine over the network. Using the converter utility installed directly on the source machine is the second choice and using the remote agent method is the first choice. I have not had any issues with drivers, unless you have a really new or really old physical box. The PETool utility will let you insert drivers. Take a look at MOA as well -> http://www.sanbarrow.com/moa.html Some people have better luck with this.

Finally, remember that the most difficult part of the process is the cleanup phase. If the conversion phase fails for whatever reason, you can re-run it without needing to reclone the machine.

Also, review the following DOC - http://viops.vmware.com/home/docs/DOC-1072

Good Luck!

Dave

[balacs]

4. The agents and related software should be uninstalled AFTER conversion. Don't forget: your backout plan is to bring the source back on line.

It may be a good idea to disable the agent before the conversion.

Bala

Dell Inc

[azn2kew]

Along with Dave's suggestion, you can read these best practices for details little bit outdated but good stuff to consider when virtualize your Exchange. You can view more guides from www.vmware-land.com as well.

Exchange:

Deploying Microsoft Exchange in VMware Infrastructure -

Microsoft Exchange Server 2003 Performance on VMware ESX Server 3 -

Virtualizing Exchange 2007 - The Final Frontier? (VMworld 2007) -

Exchange and SQL on ESX Server (VMworld 2007) -

Once P2V'ed, make sure to removed unwanted "gray out" devices and also choose the best ACPI HAL for yours should be ACPI Multiprocessor since Exchange 2007 runs heavily on CPU/RAM.

If you found this information useful, please consider awarding points for "Correct" or "Helpful". Thanks!!!

Regards,

Stefan Nguyen

iGeek Systems Inc.

VMware, Citrix, Microsoft Consultant

[dconvery]

Good point Bala