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jlehtinen
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Import and change size of 3rd party image file for use as VM ?

Hiya,

I've got a few Windows Server 2003 servers that are proving to be difficult to hot clone.

I've done cold clones in the past using 3rd party imaging software like Acronis, but what I noticed was I didn't get any options to change the partition sizes when I created virtual machines using the image. For example, if I captured an image of a 60 GB drive, I could ONLY create a VM with a 60GB drive from the image.

Does anyone know a workaround for this? The servers I need to P2V have massive chunks of empty diskspace - if I can't pare that down I'll be wasting most of my storage.

One thought I had was this:

-Capture image using Acronis, lets say it's a 60GB image with 20 GB used, 40 GB empty space

-Create a partition on a secondary computer that is the size I want, in this example lets say 30 GB.

-Push out the data to the 30 GB partition on the secondary computer (Acronis will let you do this)

-Capture an image of the NEW 30 GB partition

-Move this image to ESX and create a VM using the 30 GB image.

Thoughts?

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golddiggie
Champion
Champion

Give the VizionCore/Quest Software vConverter product a shot... It comes with a free 90 day (fully functional) trial period so you can see if it will do what you need without investing a penny... I was able to use this to V2V a server that was 2008 R2 from a hyper-v host over to an ESX cluster without any difficulty... VMware's converter couldn't do it, nor could any other products we had available to us...

VMware VCP4

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jlehtinen
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

Thanks for the reply.

I'll download this and set it up tomorrow and give it a shot. Any advice on using the software, or is it pretty straightforward?

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golddiggie
Champion
Champion

I thought it was pretty straight-forward to use.. I would read at least the available FAQ's and maybe skim through the other documentation before diving into it... Better to do that and use less time at work than to fumble around with it (smacking yourself for missing something fairly obvious later)...

VMware VCP4

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