VMConverter Snap Shot size/location, plus memory usage?

[swisstonitechi]

Hi All,

I'm new to this VMConverter and reading the guide at the mo, a couple of things I've found aren't clear and wonder if people with experience of this tool could answer?

1, The Snap Shot that converter creates during a hot clone, where is it stored during creation? Is that put straight to a specified ESX or VM host? Just wonder if you put free standalone version on a server, will the drive space be used up during creation?

2, Is Windows 2008 Server supported with converter? My guide doesn't list above 23k but topic dated 2008 said it was in experimental stage.

3, What's the ram usage with hot clone (very unlikely to be cold clone) as may well end up runnning this software on DC (I wont actually be converting DC's to virtual, just using the machine to image other physical application servers).

Thanks all

[IamTHEvilONE · Accepted solution]

>1, The Snap Shot that converter creates during a hot clone, where is it stored during creation?

That depends on where it's going. If it's going to ESX, then on that datastore, or for standalone in that directory.

>Is that put straight to a specified ESX or VM host?

Yes

>Just wonder if you put free standalone version on a server, will the drive space be used up during creation?

If you use pre-allocated, the space will be taken up right at the beginning of the conversion.

Otherwise, it will use space as the conversion goes.

2, Is Windows 2008 Server supported with converter? My guide doesn't list above 23k but topic dated 2008 said it was in experimental stage.

It is with the current versions, Standalone 4.0.x or the newest plugins (4.0.3 or 4.1.0)

3, What's the ram usage with hot clone (very unlikely to be cold clone) as may well end up runnning this software on DC (I wont actually be converting DC's to virtual, just using the machine to image other physical application servers).

Ram usage is however much it takes to do a shadow copy of a hard disk to another hard disk. I don't think it's that much. There is more disk/network IO than anything.

Regards,

EvilOne

VMware vExpert 2009

NOTE: If your problem or questions has been resolved, please mark this thread as answered and award points accordingly.

[continuum]

1, The Snap Shot that converter creates during a hot clone, where is it stored during creation?

don't get confused by the term snapshot or by the last answer - the snapshot here is a MS Volume Shadow Copy snapshot and as such it has really nothing to do with VMware snapshots.

The VSS snapshot will be stored on the target of course - not on the ESX or other remote location

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[swisstonitechi]

Thanks for the response guys, very helpfull.

Just to check, when you say pre-allocated drive space, we talking the target (ESX box) or server Converter is running on? If Converter location, where's the setting to confirm pre-allocation of space used during hot clone as I done a test install and not seen a setting for it? I'm not worried about the allocation of space on ESX as such, just wonder if the Converter server will have anything written to disk, then removed?