Convert RHEL Linux 5.11 using Standalone Converter 5.5 - storage and networking question

[MichaelLeone]

I need to convert a physical RH Enterprise Linux 5.11 physical server, using Standalone Converter 5.5. I will run the converter from a Win2008 R2 machine, pointing it at my Linux box. Here are my questions:

I have found references that say I should edit the storage of the destination VM if I am using LVM (and I am). See Kernel Panic Using VMware vCenter Converter Standalone - Uptime Through Simplicity. I don't know if this is still applicable to converter 5.5, since it supports RHEL 5.x.

- Do I need to change the destination storage to "thin" and "Basic storage", or is this unnecessary with this version of Converter? That page is from Sep 2013, which is probably an earlier version of Converter.

When converting Windows, one of the post-conversion steps is to remove "hidden" devices, which includes hidden NICs, before you can assign a static IP to the VM.

Does this apply to Linux? (I don't think so) If not, I should be able to just boot up the resulting VM; assign my static IP to eth0 (that's what it is now), and I should be good to go?

Thanks

[patanassov]

Hello Michael

To the first question - you don't need to do that. As you say, RHEL5 is supported; Converter goes a different path for unsupported distros.

To the second question - whether you prefer thin or thick provisioning is a matter of how you organize your datacenter, Converter has no preferences about that (it didn't have in the past either AFAIK). I don't understand what you mean by "basic storage", but I guess the answer would be the same 🙂

To the third question - there is no need to remove hidden devices in order to have networking (btw this is true for Windows, too. Though there might have been some corner cases requiring manual intervention).

The issues with networking are:

     - choose a  NIC type supported both by the GOS and helper VM; e1000 should be fine.

     - you can't assign static IP during conversion. However if the source machine is setup with static IP, it will be preserved

     - some distro versions (e.g. SLES10) hard code the MAC address is network config files which results is destinations w/o networking  (MAC addresses are not preserved during conversion). RHEL5 should be fine.

HTH

Plamen

[MichaelLeone]

Actually, I wasn't asking about changing to "thin" provisioning and "basic" storage; that is what the webpage says to do. It says that when you use LVM in a Linux machine, the converted VM won't boot, unless you make those changes during conversion. Then again, they were talking about CentOS (which is based on RedHat, granted). I hardly ever make changes to the default storage conversion options, and I much prefer "thick" provisioning to "thin", if I get to choose ...

OK, so it's good to know that the conversion should Just Work. Yes, the IP is static; I can use the E1000 NIC (I usually choose the VMXNET3 NIC).

Thanks

[patanassov]

You are welcome

Don't use VMXNET3 during the conversion - the helper VM wouldn't connect (a bug that will be fixed next release). You can safely change to VMXNET3 after the conversion if the GOS supports it.