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jcgieringer
Contributor
Contributor
‎08-14-2008 05:52 PM

V2V or P2V Migration Deltas

When using the converter tool for V2V migrations, when do deltas get written to the resulting files? I presume they are updated in the resulting file at the end of the process, but am curious to get an exact answer.

Thanks,

John

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2 Replies
IamTHEvilONE
Immortal
Immortal
‎08-15-2008 05:24 AM

I'm not quite sure what you are asking here (deltas specifically), so I'm going to take a stab at it from 2 perspectives.

1: When does data get written with VMware Converter 3.0.3?

0-2% - SSH is used to create the blank virtual machine on the destination. If you resized down, additional percentages are used for formatting the blank virtual hard drive

2%-97% - Data is copied from source to destination

97%-100% Reconfiguration phase.

2: I have a virtual machine with a snapshot (delta) and want to V2V is .... what happens to the snapshot?

Short answer is that the snapshot will be commited in any situation.

If you install converter inside the VM, it doesn't know what the heck a snapshot is.

If you run converter outside the virtual machine, against the VMX as the source, then it will mount the complete virtual machine hard disk. Snapshot included.




EvilOne

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jcgieringer
Contributor
Contributor
‎08-17-2008 12:00 AM

When using the converter tool to create a v2v or p2v migration copy of a live machine, how does the process handle changes that might occur on the live server during the migration? Does it update changes (deltas) on the fly until it's done, or does it cache and write changes at the end of the copy process? In other words, if any files change on the VM or physical server after the V2V or P2V is started, do those file changes get tracked by the converter and updated at the end of the process?

I realize when doing this, to "clone" a running machine, that it would probably be preferrable if the source machine was in an unchanging state during this process. It would just be nice to understand what happens if that is not always possible, to any changes made on a server during the process.

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