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coldenbillp
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P2V of Red Hat Linux 7.2

Hello-

I have a customer with an old Red Hat Linux 7.2 server. Will the free Converter Standalone let me do a P2V conversion of this server to VMware Server (free version)?

The physical server that will be converted is extremely low on disk space, in case that matters.

Thanks...

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vmweathers
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No, it will not work, for 2 reasons: RedHat 7.2 is not supported (it is an older distro running on the 2.4.x kernel and we do not support that, except for RHEL 2.1). Also Linux P2Vs need to be directed to ESX, VMware Server is not supported. However, please keep in mind that ESXi is also free.

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vmweathers
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No, it will not work, for 2 reasons: RedHat 7.2 is not supported (it is an older distro running on the 2.4.x kernel and we do not support that, except for RHEL 2.1). Also Linux P2Vs need to be directed to ESX, VMware Server is not supported. However, please keep in mind that ESXi is also free.

(If your question has been resolved please mark the answers as "Helpful" or "Correct".)

(If your question has been resolved please mark the answers as "Helpful" or "Correct".)
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LucasAlbers
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You could use systemimager or any other full system backup method to transfer this system. I have used this method to remotely migrate production critical systems.

I wonder if vmware converter could convert even if it's not supported.

It just just tars up the disk through an ssh session, so it does not need more space.

You could also:

Stand up rh 7.2 on your target vm with a vanilla install and then rsync over the data and the necessary services.

I had a redhat 8 system that I just manually copied over to an ubuntu 8.04 system.

7.2 is so old I would just migrate to a newer centos release manually.

Or

You could use a cold boot disk to backup the data.

Note:

You need to update mkinitrd to load the raid drivers and update your mount points to support your change the vm controller for the controller used by your host.

coldenbillp
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Thanks to both of your for your thoughtful answers. I will likely try to get the customer on a more recent Linux distro before considering any virtualization. Perhaps building the new server with a more current distro in VMware Server and then moving the applications over would be the best/safest approach.

Thanks again.

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LucasAlbers
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Vmware converter 4.01 might work remotely, and it can even be done remotely while the system is live without affecting the source.

I have done this on critical systems, albeit wtih centos 5.3

OR

You could try vmware converter 3.01 and use the cold boot cd.

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IamTHEvilONE
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Vmware converter 4.0.1 might work remotely, and it can even be done remotely while the system is live without affecting the source.

This is the exact same as running locally on a Linux box. If you've done a local install before, the "This Local Machine" option is grayed out. We need to use SSH remotely anyways, so all Linux boxes are treated as a remote system.

>I have done this on critical systems, albeit wtih centos 5.3

that's possible. CentOS 5.3 is a sibling OS to Red Hat Enterprise 5.x (A supported OS, and rather current). Red Hat 7.2 is way too old.

>You could try vmware converter 3.01 and use the cold boot cd.

This is technically possible, but I'd never want to do a manual reconfiguration if possible.



Regards,

EvilOne

VMware vExpert 2009

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LucasAlbers
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Just today we did a final migrate of a 7 year? (82Gb of data) oracle 9 box running redhat 7.2 box using vmware converter.

My coworker and I both looked at each other and were like, just migrate it don't change ANYTHING. If you know anything about oracle you might be familiar with that statement.

It worked friggin great. We used vmware 4 to convert remotely.

The problem we encountered and that I fixed was the converter did not handle lilo correctly.

So I had to boot with a 7.3 cd :

linux rescue.

Then rebuild the initrd with :

mkinitrd etc etc.

, then run:

lilo -c

Then install vmware tools and we were...

DONE.

It was awesome.

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kirtus
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I'm attempting a P2V of an old RH8 machine, despite not being a supported OS, figured "what the heck, give it a try." If the converter works for RH7.2 (I'm using 4.0.1), I would think it would work for 8.0, but I'm getting "Unable to detect disks or volumes on the source machine. Please make sure that the source is a supported Linux distribution.

This worked great a few days ago for a CentOS4 box, I'm guessing for the same reasons mentioned before, that it's derived from a supported RHEL distro.

Lucas, did you do anything to the 7.2 box to make it compatible before migrating?

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LucasAlbers
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No.

You could try the command line interface, or perhaps the cold boot cd that is part of vmware converter 3.0.1.

Try rebooting it, and try again.

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Chalaneru
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We've done this already.

P2V a Red Hat Linux release 7.2 (Enigma) running on IBM eserver xSeries 232, into a VMware ESXi 4.0.0 using VMware Converter Standalone 4.0.1.

After completing data copy, changed SCSI driver to BusLogic. (Virtual machine is Version 7)

Started virtual machine with a LiveCD (Knoppix 5.1) , and mounted partitions. Installed grub (in this case we used this boot manager). For the system to read the filesystems, had to include BusLogic.o driver into initrd.

And that's all. (It could be also necessary to take a look at /etc/fstab in case mountpoints have changed)

Hope this helps someone.

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