Problems converting physical servers to VM's

[beaux]

I am new to VMware and I posted a question a few weeks ago about conversion with the Converter Standalone 4.0.1.  Long story short, I have not been able to successfully convert any of my servers.  First I had the newest version of Converter Standalone that was incompatible with Server 2000.  Second, I had do recreate my datastore with a larger block size to accommodate the 400GB hard drive on my server.  I never got it to boot at all, just a blinking cursor when I power on the VM so I gave up on that one.  Now I am trying to convert a fileserver with Server 2003.  The conversion itself went fine, I have read all of the recommended configurations for virtualizing Server 2003, but when I start the VM it continuously loads at the Windows splash screen.  I can not get it to boot all the way to the log in screen.  Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[CorporIT]

You might have better luck with a different version of the converter. My team uses 4 versions of it for different scenarios we face.

In this case, we have see that the VMDK settings don't always get created correctly. Check out this KB: http://kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/search.do?language=en_US&cmd=displayKC&externalId=101682...

We have seen this countless times and have been fairly successful with it.

[beaux]

Do you have the different versions running on different Admin PC's?  When I try to install a newer version it erases the older versions.   Do you find that specific versions work better with specific operating systems?  If so, what are they?  Thanks.

[CorporIT]

We typically install directly on to the Server or workstation we are converting. To that end, no one version works better than the other, in our findings. We try to use the most recent version 4.3 but 4.0.1 has also been pretty useful.

You can also try the bootable VMware converter CD to do cold clones of your machines - Just an FYI.

[tacticsbaby]

Before you did your P2V did you make sure that any Virus scanners were disabled? I have seen this stop or screw up conversions. In fact, you should check to see if there are services running that may interfere with your P2V. Perhaps a service(s) is failing on startup for the converted VM.

[CorporIT]

Agreed. I have seen issues with older database servers or applications that do not have compatible VSS writers bomb-out the conversion. It almost all cases, try to stop critical services prior to starting a conversion.

[beaux]

I do have Vipre Enterprise running on each server.  I would not have thought of that.  I also have a SQLBase Engine running on one server that failed, but I suspended it before deploying the agent.  I will shut down the Virus scanner and try again.  Thanks for the tip.

[tacticsbaby]

Check with the vendor of the Virus scan before doing this. The reason I suggest this is because there may be  related services that do not stop or behave as expected just because you stop the virus scanner. I have had this happen to me. Hope thing work out.