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sergeadam
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

P2V dilema

I have to P2V 2 servers. Both contain GPT partitions. One serverhas 2 1.81TB  drives as GPT. The other has 2 3.63TB GPT drive.

The 2 issues I'm loooking at are 1) the amount of time it would take to P2V all that data. and 2) GPT drives.

My first thought was to create a VM file server, copy the data, map the dt=ata from the file server. But you can't create a share on a mapped drive.

My second thought was to create VMDKs on a new VM, copy the data, and then attach those VMDKs to the new P2V'd servers. The 1.81TB are no problem. The 3.63s will require 2 VMDKs each in a spanned volume. That will not likely work.

Is there a good way to deal with it?

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AndreTheGiant
Immortal
Immortal

You can also use a physical RDM to use disk larger than 2 TB.

Or, if you have iSCSI, a guest iSCSI.

Andrew | http://about.me/amauro | http://vinfrastructure.it/ | @Andrea_Mauro
sergeadam
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I need VMDKs for VEEAM to back up the VM.

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nielse
Expert
Expert

As Andre said you could go for RDM and use it for the 3.6TB data disk Smiley Happy.

@nielsengelen - http://foonet.be - VCP4/5
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sergeadam
Enthusiast
Enthusiast

I've actually anwered my own question. I found out that if I create a spanned volume in Windows from a number of VMDKs, I can attach them to a new Windows server and Windows will recognize them as a foreign config and recreate the spanned volume. Very cool.

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