Breaking a Microsoft cluster and going stand alone to P2V into a VMware a environment

[Shallis]

I have searched and searched for the best possible answer to this question and can't seem to find any specific answers!

I have a Windows server 2003 fileserver in a 2 node cluster (active/passive) with resources on a SAN and what I want to do is:

1.Eliminate the cluster and have all resources on one machine.

2. Rename the machine with the resources to the virtual server name (cluster name)

3 Make a P2V of the fileserver into my clustered vmware environment

I have no problems with doing steps 2 and 3, but eliminating the cluster and going strictly standalone is my Goliath. From what I have read, I need to move all the resources to one node, then stop the cluster service on the other node, then evict the node. From there I don't know what to do. Please Help!!!! I want to get this done in the next couple of weeks.

[vmroyale]

Hello.

Can you elaborate a little more on the setup? When you say "resources on the SAN", do you mean the file shares are all on the SAN?

What VMware products/versions are you using?

[Shallis]

That is correct. When I look at the cluster admin console, the resources are the disks and files shares. I'm currently running ESX 3.5 Update1 on all 4 of my hosts with Vcenter 2.5 Update 3. Sorry about the pic you'll have to right click and save the pic

[vmroyale · Accepted solution]

Check this Microsoft kb article.

Another option might be to build a new file server as a VM, and then attach the storage where the shares are located as a RDM.

Options are always good.

Good Luck!

[Shallis]

I have read this KB befroe but not thoroughly enough. I read this time and it gave me what I as looking for. Thank you!!

We were going to create a new fileserver and then attach the LUNs but we wanted to make the data on the LUNs into VMDKs so we could take a full image backup of it for DR purposes. When we did file level restores for our fileserver at our DR exercise it would take hours and hours and hours because of all the files but with the image level restore of the VMDKs it will just be 9 Monsterous files. Plus I wated the Storage Vmotion capabilities. Thanks again!!