Converting existing esxi 5.1 vm with iscsi guest connections

[JBal180]

Hello all,

My question is this.  I have several servers that have this issue but i'm going to focus on one because it is the most complicated of the bunch.

Server 2008r2

It has  a drive layout that follows

C Drive in a current vm datastore

D drive net app iscsi connection

E and F connected with ms iscsi connection.

Here is what i want to do, I have a brand new SAN and would like to migrate this entire machine to this new storage.  So i want to take all 4 drives (again from 3 different sources) and put them onto the new SAN.  I'm assuming P2V will work for this.  What issues can I expect?  Does anybody have experience with this?

Thanks

[weinstein5]

Welcome to the Community - Yes P2V (or more accurately since it sounds like the osurce machine is a VM - V2V)  will allow you to consolidate the different data sources to a vmfs datastore - There shoudl be no issues as long as you follow the COnverter documentation -

[patanassov]

Hello

I am not quite clear what this setup means.

"C Drive in a current vm datastore" Does it mean the server is a VM (as Weinstein supposes) and C: is located on a ESX local datastore?

"D drive net app iscsi connection. E and F connected with ms iscsi connection." These don't look like located on ESX SAN datastores, do they? I suppose they are volumes on SAN LUNs attached directly from the guest OS (if this is a VM). If so, V2V won't work. (If it is a physical machine, V2V obviously won't work )

P2V has better chances of success but I wouldn't give you 100% guarantee. You can make a few tests before the real migration - start a few conversions selecting only 1 volume each time (I mean a separate conversion per volume, eventually just E for both E and F). There will be a warning message when you deselect the system volume, don't worry about it. Start the conversions and just ensure cloning starts; you can then cancel them. The whole test will take about 5min and, if successful, will give you good confidence for the real conversion.

There is still some risk about reconfiguration but hopefully it will be fine (the destination VM will use LSI Logic SAS virtual controllers in place of the source machine's iSCSI ones).

HTH

Plamen

[JBal180]

To answer your questions Plamen

Let me try to reexplain what i'm trying to accomplish.  I am implementing a new SAN and need to consolidate my vmdks and other storage

I have an exchange server that is in my vmware infrastructure

It's c drive is in an existing shared storage datastore as it should be and moving it to the new san is no problem

It's D drive is connected to a Netapp SAN using iscsi,.

It's E and F drive are connected to another Storage appliance through iscsi.

What i need to accomplish is converting these iscsi drives to a vmdk and storing them on my new SAN.  I need to do this to utilize Veeam and my new hardware.

My question then is how should i accomplish this having as small of downtime as possible.  My initial thought was to do a P2V into a new machine.  Now i'm wondering if i can just "virtualize" those iscsi drives and add them to the existing VM.

Thoughts/ideas?

Thanks

[patanassov]

I don't know how you can "just virtualize those iscsi drives", at least converter can't do that. Perhaps this article might help: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=100524...

The "converter way" would be to do a P2V with synchronization; the downtime will be a few minutes.

HTH

Plamen