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RomoVal
Contributor
Contributor
‎08-05-2013 02:02 AM

RHEL 5 P2V

Dear all:

I am new to data center products.

I need to clone several servers as VM and some of them are Linux RHEL 5, but I am not sure if my only option is to have as destination ESXi. Cannot I use VMware Workstation?

It seems the only way to clone from Linux is as having ESXi as destination.

I would have running on LInux the following services that I would like not to shutdown:

  • Oracle database instances
  • Java application servers
  • Tomcat web servers

Is there any known limitation, even with ESXi, for that?

I reckon that to run the VM properly in the ESXi host, I would need to have the same HW profile plus a ballpark value of 20% for the main parameters and the clone will have ABSOLUTELY everything.

Regards,

Roman.

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5 Replies
zXi_Gamer
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
‎08-05-2013 05:18 AM

Hi,

    While I have done downtime less conversion for windows guests using VMware convertor, I have not done for Linux guests. Check these threads Physical to Virtual Conversion with No Downtime

VMware Converter: How to Move Physical Machines to VMs with VMware Converter - Part 2

Cannot I use VMware Workstation?

It is good to use for any virtual environments. But if you wish to take out the host os dependency and utilize the full hardware to the virtual machines, then ESXi would be good to go.

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pierreLx
Enthusiast
Enthusiast
‎08-05-2013 05:23 AM

Hi,

VMware workstation is not the best solution to virtualize server so you should go for a P2V on ESXi hosts. Before the migration, all your services will have to be stopped otherwise you may loose datas on the destination VM. Once you have your VM in your virtual infrastucture, you will have to stop your physical server et start the VM.

In any case, there will be network and services disruption.

Regards

Pierre

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RomoVal
Contributor
Contributor
‎08-05-2013 06:28 AM

OK, one thing I forget to mention is that this is going to be used to clone a client environment to our environment, so I need to tell the client what to do and do the utmost to make sure they will not making a mistake an giving me an unusable set of files, or worse yet ruin the source server.

I am not sure if they have ESXi experience, so the message has to be fool proof.

So they will keep running their physical servers and we will just have to change the local host IP address in the /etc/hosts file.

The summary is:

  1. Install ESXi in destination host
  2. Install converter in temp host
  3. Shutdown everything in the source server (scheduled shutdown)
  4. Launch converter from temp host and connect remotely to Linux source host
  5. Clone everything
  6. Restart source server services
  7. Send over the cloned VMs in an external disk
  8. Install our local ESXi
  9. Open the VM files from external disk in the above host

Are the VM file is ESXi format similar to the ones for Workstation?

Any recommendation on how to pack and send the VM over?

Regards,

Roman.

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zXi_Gamer
Virtuoso
Virtuoso
‎08-05-2013 06:33 AM

Are the VM file is ESXi format similar to the ones for Workstation?

Yes. Pretty much for most of the important files required for operation.

Any recommendation on how to pack and send the VM over?

Sorry, can you care to explain a bit. In meantime, have a looksy here VMware KB: Moving or copying a virtual machine within a VMware environment

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RomoVal
Contributor
Contributor
‎08-05-2013 06:38 AM

Sure, I need to provide the client guidance on what to do after the clone is done in theri ESXi environment.

So I need to understand how to move or copy a virtual machine OUTSIDE a given VMware environment, to be consumed by ANOTHER VMware environment.

I will look the URL anyway.

Thanks for your quick response,

Roman.

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