Converter Physical to ESXi

[jcwuerfl]

When you use the converter to go from a Windows 2003 server on Physical Hardware to ESXi server, its just basically a clone correct? it wouldn't delete/destroy anything on the source when you run this ?

Was thinking of using Converter to do a Clone of a Server to ESXi to test out an upgrade to a software package but the server will probably in the end end up on a ESX Server at some point.. just dont want anythign to happen to the source in this case.

Thanks

[continuum]

Only Cold Clones with a BootCD do not change your source-system

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description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[dconvery]

Hey Ulli -

Now I am confused. Technically, yes, it does change the W2K3 SOURCE server. But I thought the only change was that it installed the converter service and that it uses VSS to perform the clone. I have done hundreds of conversions for customers, as I am sure you have, and that is the only change that I knew of...

Naturally, the destination gets the VMware drivers installed along with the required registry settings.

Are there other things that happen?

Dave

[jcwuerfl]

I'm fine with the Converter agent being installed on the source, that's not a huge deal because it'll auto-uninstall or you can do a manual uninstall of that. Just wanted to make sure nothing else was done to the "source". It sounds from dconvery's post that is all it does which is very cool.

[dconvery]

Welllllll...You've got a 50/50 shot at getting the agent to uninstall automatically... And Ulli is the master. I would wait for his answer if you are concerned.

[jayolsen]

But for the cold clone I did not believe the agents are installed. You boot the source from a CD and clone from there, once you unmount the CD and restart the host, there should be no changes to it other than the reboot.

[dconvery]

Right. For W2K3 it works like that. It just does a clone of the disk, similar to Ghost or Altiris imaging. It is based on WinPE, so it will upgrade the NTFS on an NT4 box.

Dave