In the conter administration guide is following written:
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vsp_vcc_42_admin_guide.pdf
Page 10
You can set vCenter Converter to synchronize the destination virtual machine with the source machine after
hot cloning. Synchronization is performed by transferring from the source to the destination the blocks that
were changed during the initial cloning period. To avoid loss of data on the destination virtual machine,
vCenter Converter can shut down certain Windows services before the synchronization. Based on your
settings, vCenter Converter shuts down the selected Windows services so that no critical changes occur on the
source machine while destination is being synchronized.
From my perspective it works like following:
1.) Hot Clone from source machine to the destination virtual machine
2.) Synronization is done directly after the hot cloning, to get the delta during the initial cloning period.
Page 11
To
ensure that the destination virtual machine retains all of the blocks that changed in the source system during
the initial cloning process, turn on the synchronization feature. With synchronization on, if any changes occur
on the source machine during the initial conversion, vCenter Converter copies them to the destination machine
after the initial conversion is complete.
Which technic is use : Windows VSS Snapshot
Page 28
Limitations Related to Creating Snapshots of Windows Sources
vCenter Converter uses VSS snapshots to save the state of source volumes during hot cloning of physical and
virtual machines that run Windows. VSS snapshots are also used to synchronize the destination virtual
machine with the source machine after the initial conversion. Some of the VSS-related issues are inherited in
vCenter Converter and can prevent the proper completion of your conversion tasks.
3.) Only the combination of stopping the service with syncronization makes sense.
Page 53
You can make sure that you do not lose data from services running on the source machine. You can select
which services to stop before vCenter Converter synchronizes the data between the source and
destination machine. As a result, the services do not generate data while source and destination machines
are synchronized.
Importing a powered-on Windows machine means that vCenter Converter copies data from the source
machine to the destination machine while the source machine is still running and generating changes.
This process is the first transfer of data. You can transfer data for the second time by copying only the
changes made during the first transfer of data. This process is called synchronization.
What does the second time mean ? Can I do following :
Do at Monday from 20:00-24:00 the Hotcloning of the physical server to virtual.
Then at Tuesday 20:00 syncronize the physical server with the virtual and than shutdown the physical server .
I think this is not possible, two separte the first and the second step.
Page 55
Synchronize the Destination Machine with Changes from the Source Machine
Importing a powered-on Windows machine means that vCenter Converter copies data from the source
machine to the destination machine while the source machine is still running and generating changes. This
process is the first transfer of data. You can transfer data for the second time by copying only the changes made
during the first transfer of data. This process is called synchronization.
Synchronization is available only for Windows XP or later source operating systems.
If you resize FAT volumes or shrink NTFS volumes, you cannot use the synchronization option.
Prerequisites
Stop various source services to make sure they do not generate additional changes during the synchronization,
which could lead to data loss.
The you means that I only can do this at start time of the conversion, when the wizards to set up conversion tasks is choosen.
In all this means to me that with syncronization the maintaince window ia based on the time how long the syncronization takes and the shutdown of the physical server and the power on off the virtual machine.
