Re: P2V best practise?

Mors · ‎02-28-2008

Hi, I wonder if anyone could offer a few words of advice please?

I've been tasked with developing a virtual strategy for our company and sent off to investigate virtualisation with ESX. To that point I've pretty much got the idea, I've set up ESX on a server, built new guests on it and got everything running ok. I also set it up within Workstation and Fusion (where I do most of my testing) and got things running ok in there too.

Now I'm onto the 2nd stage - P2V migrations.

Before I start this I've done some reading, and got an idea of what apps to use, and to be honest I've had a crack at a couple of conversions and they haven't worked - So I'd like a bit of advice if possible of the best way to attack general P2V's.

My main cencerns are around the hardware platform change.

What is the best way to do a P2V or even another V2V with a hardware platform change. Should I install the VMware Conversion tool on the live server and create the virtual machine straight off the live server? Or should I image it and then convert the image? Should I install the converter on a remote machine and then remotely create the image?

How do you folks usually attack a P2V in semi bullet point format? i.e

Power down server

Image with Ghost

Convert Ghost image to virtual image

Import in ESX

Fire up

I have grave concerns about the migration from Physical to Virtual with any of our MS platforms as they never play ball with hardware changes. Clean installs on the the ESX - Fair enough, but a migration onto and ESX? I can see disaster looming....

Any ideas/advice/pointers are greatly appreciated.

PerryWhittle · ‎02-28-2008

i run VMware converter from a remote machine (hot clone) and have never really had a problem. You can P2V while the source is live (doesnt require a shutdown unless the source is a VM then you have to power it down). Gotchas to look out for are software (Windows) RAID, converter cant handle these and spurious changes to the boot.ini file. I had 1 windows 2000 server that would get to 97% and fail, turned out someone previously had edited the boot.ini and edited it incorrectly, windows still booted but converter got confused. Corrected the file and P2V was successful. Oh and steer away from Windows dynamic disks too

Regards

Pez

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pdrace · ‎02-28-2008

I've used Converter to move physical Windows to Virtual without issues

Reboot server with bootable cd

Run conversion from CD

Power down physical server

Power up vm, uninstall any hardware specific monitoring software

I've had to restore servers to different hardware using backup software now that can be a disaster!

wondab · ‎02-28-2008

I have used VMware Converter installed on a remote machine. The physical server stays powered on but freezes during the process and will not be accessible to users.

Biggest problems I encountered were:

utiliy partition on the physical box-there is no need to convert those over, but you have to watch out for the boot.ini file. If you do not bring over the utility partition you will have to change the boot.ini file. To be safe I would modify it so that all partitions are displayed upon power on and you can choose one.

multiple NICs on a server. Watch out for the bind order of the NICs on the VM after conversion.

Converter agent failed to install on target physical machine-specially on NT boxes (must have SP6a at a minimum but sometimes it still does not work as planned)

Steps?

I would say

Beg for downtime

Perform a full backup of you physical server

Delete unnecessary files, defrag the physical server and check for any errors in the event logs, resolve as much as you can before the conversion

Start VMare converter

Go through the wizard and choose your hardware preferences-plan for future(disk space)

Do not yet connect the NICs, or connect but leave them on the private network until you are ready to cut over

Shut down the physical box

Power on the VM and check for errors, check configuration, NICs

When ok, change network from private to whatever VLan you want it to be

Keep the physical server for a few weeks just in case

VmRoybal · ‎02-28-2008

Currently, we run Converter on a VM. We are looking to placing it on a physical box due to some issues with SQL boxes. What we do, is schedule a period of time with the business owner so that we can have the server "quiessed" and then we convert the server.

We unfortunately do not defrag the HDDs of the servers, although that is a good idea. Nor do we perform a backup of the physical boxes beforehand. We have a directory of scripts and executable that we copy over to the physical box prior to conversion in order to cleanup the VM once created. I have utilized some of the scripts and whatnot from this thread, http://communities.vmware.com/thread/25121 , of course I had to make some changes to meet our environment/processes.

Here is process in a nutshell:

change the local admin password (this is due to our security constraints)
copy our P2V directory to the physical box (which contains items from: http://communities.vmware.com/message/273286#273286 and http://communities.vmware.com/thread/25121 )
rename the NICs to a standard (production network and tape network)
run our pre convert script
convert the server
wait for the conversion to complete

Once the conversion completed.

edit the settings of the VM (CPU count, RAM and such)
remove legacy hardware (USB ports, serial ports...etc)
install VmTools
rename the NICs to what we named on the physical box
run our post conversion scripts
cleanup the VM by removing any physical hardware specific drivers and the like.

We also keep the physical box around for a week, just in case there is an issue with the conversion.

Linkage recap:
P2V pre/post conversion scripts:
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/25121

Removal on non persistent devices:
http://communities.vmware.com/message/273286#273286

We have yet to test this, but it looks promising:
Removal of HP/Compaq agents:
http://communities.vmware.com/thread/70682

The resources and friendly help you can find on these boards is phenomenal...

-=v=-

-=v=-

dmorgan · ‎02-28-2008

One big gotcha, albeit simple, is MS Windows licensing. Once you convert and power on the VM, it will more than likely ask you to activate windows. If you have a site license, no big deal. Otherwise you could end up stuck until you can license windows.

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Mors · ‎02-29-2008

Thanks for all the input folks, much appreciated. I've just had another crack, hot cloning with the vmconverter on a XP machine and an SBS 2K3 R2 machine, and to be fair, it went pretty well. I'm impressed.

Now I've got the basics of a strategy together I can move forward.

I'll have to look into the process a bit further at a later regards to scripting shutting down the services etc, defragging the disks beforehand, and doing the image from boot instead of doing it live.

Thanks for all your help and advice though

Regards

All

P2V best practise?