p2v a linux machine

[timcwhite]

Good morning,

Has anyone ever converted a pysical Linux machine into a virtual machine? If so what tool did you use?

Thanks

Tim

[Troy_Clavell]

I've only successfully done 1 cold P>V Migration of Linux using VMware converter. Support is experimental and may or my not be successful for you.

http://www.vmware.com/support/converter/doc/releasenotes_conv303.html#guestos

There are third party utilities out there such as PlateSpin and LeoStream that may work a little better.

hope this helps.

[philvirt]

Experimental support only is available for Linux-based physical to virtual machine conversions using the Vmware Converter BootCD (cold cloning) if the source physical machine has SCSI disks.

Regards,

Fil

[donikatz]

I've done a few cold with VMware Converter 3.x. Note that VMware Converter won't yet resize Linux disks/volumes, so to reduce their size I use KNOPPIX with gparted and dd to resize the original partitions and copy them to new VMDK(s) with smaller partitions defined. Then reinstall the boot loader (grub) with a rescue disk and away we go. To grow rather than shrink the fs on boot vol, I'll use KNOPPIX and resize2fs. After much research on these boards (lots of threads on this), I decided this was the best approach for my needs. If I had a large qty of Linux boxes that would need resizing, I'd be more inclined to look at a pricey 3rd-party option (although none are just click and go like Windows).

[azn2kew]

You can check out Transitive Quick Migration tool which is specialize to P2V Solaris/Linux/SPARC systems nicely fit into ESX farm.

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