Issue with Xen conversion

[alekp]

Hey all,

Wondering if anyone has experience with the following

I have a windows guest in a Xen platform i am trying to bring over into VMWare

The converter (Version 5.1) is connecting to it fine and detecting the disks, allows me to select everything and starts the conversion

Then it sits there at 1% forever.

No firewalls at all (completely disabled them) it never times out.

Confirmed DNS is ok - but i did a hosts file line as well to ensure it doesnt have the issue.

I dont really get any errors in the logs. It says it took a VSS snapshot ok, then "starting to clone from VSS snapshoit"

Then nothing

Guest is 2008 R2 it is not a domain controller

Anyone done this before?

[a_nut_in]

Hey Alekp,

Not sure without the logs but another option would be to take a full block level backup off the VM and "restore" it on ESX/VC using converter. This is as converter does not actuall mention Xen as a valid source for conversion.

So if you are using say a Symantec Net Backup or something, you could technically take a full VM backup and convert the backed up image to VC/ESX

http://www.vmware.com/support/converter/doc/conv_sa_501_rel_notes.html

Check under "Interoperability"

Another option you could try is installing converter within the Guest OS and trying. But if you also collect the converter logs and post them here, we can check and see what's causing the actual failure in the first place

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1010633

Regards

a

[alekp]

Hey,

Thanks for offering the assistance!

Logs attached

No change running it on the VM itself

[a_nut_in]

Are you seeing any VSS/Snapshot provider errors in the Event Viewer within the guest OS?

824 warning 'task-2'] [UsedClusterBitmapImpl] FlushFileBuffers failed for volume \\.\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy7, error: 19
2013-02-19T05:50:56.734-08:00 [02824 warning 'task-2'] FileClusterBitmapBuilder [AddBadBlockExtents] Unable to get bad blocks extents for \\.\GLOBALROOT\Device\HarddiskVolumeShadowCopy7\. Error: 5

Regards

a

[alekp]

Nope.

The only one is this one, but it matches when i canclled the task. The others i let run did not create any errors

Unexpected failure. Error code: 490@01010004

[alekp]

Just for the fun of it, i am running a chkdsk incase thats the issue, but i doubt it.

I'll report back when it's done

[alekp]

Nope

I also noticed the time was off to the server by like 28 hours - updated it so they were the same.

Run a chkcsk and retried - no change

Still no errors from VSS

Has anyone actually managed to convert a Raw xen (not citrix xen) VM to VMWare?

[POCEH]

Why you cancel task? If you see network activity then the process is in progress... could you check? Advance with 1% of big disk and slow network can be time consuming

[alekp]

I cancelled it because it was doing nothing.No CPU load, no memory spike, no network traffic at all.

SAS disks and a gigabit network, so it's not slow disks. I have done a few conversions before

[POCEH]

What is your destination VC/ESX and which version?

Try to turn off SSL too: http://communities.vmware.com/message/2188760#2188760

[alekp]

5.1 converter

ESXi 5

Also tried a ESXi 5.1 server

Same thing on both

Trying the SSL, been 20 min since i started it, still at 1%, i would have expected it to at least gotten to 2

[a_nut_in]

Hey Alek,

So this approach is definitely not working. What software/tool are you using for your scheduled VM backups? Another approach you can take is take a full VM backup using VEEAM or Symantec Net Bacup or Acronis.

Once the backup (block level) has been taken, you can use that backed up image as the source for VMware Converter and convert the backed up image to a working virtual machine on the ESX environment.

Converter supports the following platforms

Third-party backup images and virtual machines

• Microsoft Virtual PC 2004 and Microsoft Virtual PC 2007
• Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 and Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2
• Hyper-V Server virtual machines that run Windows guest operating systems
• Hyper-V Server virtual machines that run Linux guest operating systems
• Acronis True Image Echo 9.1, 9.5, and Acronis True Image 10.0, 11.0 (Home product)
• Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery (formerly LiveState Recovery) 6.5, 7.0, 8.0 and 8.5, LiveState Recovery 3.0 and 6.0 (only .sv2i files)
• Norton Ghost version 10.0, 11.0, 12.0, 13.0, and 14.0 (only .sv2i files)
• Parallels Desktop 2.5, 3.0, and 4.0
• StorageCraft ShadowProtect 2.0, 2.5, 3.0, 3.1, and 3.2

The other way you can try is converting the VM to hyper V image using Microsoft Converter (vmm) and using that as the source for conversion

Regards

a

[POCEH]

Could you restart the conversion with 'trivia' log level? converter-worker.xml (on Converter's computer) and converter-agent.xml (on Phisycal machine), also need to restart services.

[alekp]

Yeah, backups, about that........ R1Soft might do it actually. Will have to try that

Ill try with the trivia level and see what comes of it, but at this point, i may just switch to trying R1Soft

I'll report back

[alekp]

Hang on, turning of SSL worked.......

It is just estimating 8 days to complete it :smileysilly: