P2V Machine with Drive larger than 2TB

[mdfields]

I have a server that I am having issues converting. Below are the specs:

- Windows 2003

- Directly attached Dell PowerVault MD1000

- 4TB Raid 5 config on the MD1000, all 1 LUN presented to Windows.

When I go throught the P2V wizard in converter, the local C drive shows up but the 4TB drive letter does not. Is this due to its size or that it is direct attached storage?

If is size related, which I think it may, are there any good tools out there to reduce the size of a RAID 5 LUN? I looked at Partition Magic and I believe it only supports non-RAID configurations.

Thanks

Matt

[kucharski]

The Converter product is not seeing the HBA probably in the physical server. You might want to try using Bart's PE with Ghost. I used this combo at a few clients sites that had SAN storage attach and it saw the HBA with no problems and migrated the data over to a vmdk file. Something for you to think about.

Michael

[mdfields]

So then I would import it from the Ghost image?

Will Converter handle importing a 4TB drive OK?

Thanks

[mdfields]

From my understanding, with Ghost, you can only image one physical drive at a time.

So would I convert the Physical machine normally using converter minus the large drive, the Ghost a copy of the large drive, then import it into the newly converted VM?

Will shares and permission still be there if I do this?

I see in converter how you can import a image files as VM's, but how do you import it as only a vmdk file?

Will Ghost see drives from a Perc controller?

[theanykey]

Is this a hot clone or a cold clone using the CD?

If it is a hot clone, where is converter installed? Locally or remotely?

What version of converter?

What is the blocksize set for your ESX /vmfs target storage? By default it is set to 1mb meaning the largest filesize acceptable is 256gb. The largest blocksize acceptable is 8mb giving you the option to hold a filesize no larger then 2TB. This means that if the resulting .vmdk file is larger then 2TB, it wont fit onto /vmfs

From the Configuration maximums guide:

http://www.vmware.com/pdf/vi3_301_201_config_max.pdf

VMFS 3

Volume size (block size = 1MB) ~16TB 4GB (denotes an approximate value)

Volume size (block size = 2MB) ~32TB 8GB

Volume size (block size = 4MB) ~64TB 16GB

Volume size (block size = 8MB) 64TB

File size (block size=1MB) 256GB

File size (block size=8MB) 2TB

An option could be to simply disconnect the LUN, convert your OS partition, bring up the VM, re-attach the LUN link.

[mdfields]

I is a hot clone, which I have tried locally and remotely.

Using version 1.0 of Converter Enterprise.

The target block size is 8 MB

The problem with detaching and reattaching is that this is not a SAN LUN. This LUN is from storage that is directly attached to the physical server (one connection). We are running an ESX cluster, so sharing the direct attached storage between two machine and maintaining HA would be impossible.

What I am trying to do is totally migrate the data currenly on this direct attached storage to our exising SAN, and I thought I could so so with VMWare Converter.

So I am still a little confused. Is it the LUN Size or that is Direct Attached storage via a Dell Perc card that is causing the LUN not to display in Converter?

[theanykey]

If you were using a cold clone (bootCD) then the perc raid controllers and your HBA would require (by use of a floppy disk) drivers with respect to the OS used for the cold clone. For our bootCD we use windows 2003. When using the floppy, Simply hit F6 for third party drivers during the loading of our winPE bootCD.

There is no version 1.0 for converter. There is the downloadable version which is now at version 3.0.2 update1 (www.vmware.com/downloads/converter/) or the plugin version (for virtualcenter 2.5) which is listed as version 4.0.0

Your blocksize is 8mb which means the resulting .vmdk file can NOT be larger then 2TB.

Since you are unable to see this disk type via converter, you might want to open a service request support ticket with us to see if there is a possible bug in play or something over-looked.

If you use partitionmagic, keep in mind converter may not be able to read the filesystem thereafter. This is a known issue where converting a non-Microsoft formatted system volume may result in a non-bootable target. Please see the Converter release notes: http://www.vmware.com/support/converter/doc/releasenotes_conv302.html#issues. Specifically, under the heading: "The target virtual machine is not bootable if the active system volume is not formatted by Microsoft Operating System."

As a workaround you could convert just the OS drive and create a new virtual disk for that VM. Either bring up both machines (with different IP/hostnames) and file/robo copy the data over or simply image and then restore into that empty virtual disk.