Virtualize existing file cluster, losing MSCS

[cmorrall]

I have an older MSCS setup running Windows 2000 on an older storage system. For various reasons, I cannot merge the existing SAN fabrics from this setup to a planned VMware ESX enviornment. The new ESX setup would use seperate SAN fabrics and a new storage system.

Would it be possible to use p2v to pull the existing "virtual" (in the MSCS terminology) file servers, ie resource groups, to an ESX environment? I would lose the underlying MSCS functionality, my goal would be to have as many new VMs as there were resource groups created in the MSCS cluster. The VMs would be plain windows servers, serving files with the same network name as the existing network name resources in MSCS.

[wgardiner]

Im not sure exactly what you want to achieve by trying to bring your "resource groups" accross to your virtual environment if you aren't using MSCS. I would personally build the new virtual machine, and recreate your shares manually. If you aren't using MSCS on your new file server your old resources, resource groups etc etc aren't relevent any more.

[cmorrall]

Well not the resource group as such, I meant the functional equivalent of a resource group. Network name, ip adress, shares and disk volume(s).

The idea would be to make the migration a bit smoother with less downtime than to do a manual migration with copy or backup/restore, but I guess that option would be the one I would have to go with.

[kjb007]

That's an interesting question. While you can point converter to the virtual name given to the cluster, ultimately, the node will respond and that is the OS that will be converted into a machine. It will have the same name as the node that converter connected to, and you will see the disk that node will have access to (as well as the others that are currently mastered on that node). You could run this multiple times, and only pick the storage device that you wanted, but the cluster service will try to convert as well, which may cause you problems after the conversion has completed.

It would be much simpler, in my oppinion, to build a new file server, copy all of your data over, and then use the alias name you had previously to point to your new file server, and then add the IP address as a 2nd IP address onto the server you just built. This would also minimize the downtime, and would be less error prone.

-KjB