Dell P2V

[Wimo]

We are scheduling some P2Vs of old Dell servers - we're pretty much an HP shop, these are from an aquisition I believe. The disks are managed by Dell OpenManage Array Manager, which is a rebranded Veritas VEA. Several of the servers have the C and data drives on one disk. The C drives really need to be expanded as they are almost full.

Has anyone done this before? Will Array Manager recognize the bigger drive and deal with it, or is this going to be a big mess?

[vmroyale]

Hello.

I have P2Vd a ton of Dells and never had any issues with the Array Manager. I set all the Dell services to manual, prior to the P2V process so that they never start on the virtual. Then any Dell-specific software is uninstalled on the virtual. Just use Converter to split the partitions off on to separate disks as part of the P2V and stop those services and everything should be fine.

Good Luck!

[Wimo]

Thanks. So uninstall Array Mgr after conversion? And Windows native Disk Management will leap in and save the day, so to speak?

[Troy_Clavell]

I think following Brian's approach will be the safest. In theory removing and hardware specific utilities/services after conversion won't hurt, but, if you are worried, snapshot the VM prior to removing the Array Manager.

[vmroyale · Accepted solution]

So uninstall Array Mgr after conversion? And Windows native Disk Management will leap in and save the day, so to speak?

Exactly.

And like Troy said, taking lots of snaps along the way is great for letting you quickly roll back to a working state.