Netware 6.5 cluster migrate to ESX 3.5

[tsd_david]

Dear all,

Do you have experiment or practice on migrating a pair of Netware 6.5 SP7 Cluster file servers (Storage volume on SAN) to VI3 ESX 3.5 Update 1?

What I am expecting to do is P2V the Netware DOS partion with SYS to ESX by portlock. The SAN storage to be mapped to the Virtaul Machines by RDM.

My question is, Do I have to remove the cluster before migrate to ESX? Or any as well as the document on it? Thanks!

b.rgds,

David

[kjb007]

I have a few NetWare vm's that are clustered, but my NetWare guys preferred to do manual installs of NetWare within the vm to avoid any unforseen complications from a P2V. Since you're using a 3rd party product to do migration, I can't speak to its effectiveness, but I've heard good things for PortLock. Depends on how critical it is, and whether it's that much more difficult to install manually. For 2 servers, I may not take the chance.

-KjB

[tsd_david]

Hi! Thanks for your information. I had success to use PortLock to P2V the production Netware 6.5 to ESX before but not in Novell Cluster Service. What I am worry is after I P2V a Netware 6.5 with Novell Cluster Service do I need to perform any further configure on the Cluster before it enter to service!

b. rgds,

David

[TCronin]

Just an FYI, Netware clusters are not officially supported by VMware. We had a few running and ended up moving them back to physical because we could not keep the sbd's from having issues. Since we couldn't get support from VMware and Novell was unfamilar with VMware we decided to not continue

We also used portlock and ended up having issues with it not changing some of the guids, hopefully that's been fixed. For Netware transfers we use their migration wizard.

[tsd_david]

Thanks for your information! It is very useful!

[Bastien_P]

We are trying to use portlock but have some issue right now with the nss pool... But its maybe our server. For the cluster i had in the idea of cloning only 2 of 4 server (1a and 2a lets say). Since we will only use them for testing our future migration to the MS world.....

if not portlock.... and not rebuilt full server.. the other option is the migration wizard if i understand correctly?

thanks

[lholling]

Generally with Portlock you have a "blocks with no owner" error. This means that there are blocks in the NSS Pool that are not allocated to anything. Generally they should be on the free list. When this happens there is only one way to fix it and that is run a Pool Rebuild and then you should be fine.

Because you are doing a rebuild make sure that you have a good verified backup available just to make sure that you have no problems of course. I have done this a number of times and not had a problem.

As far as bringing over the cluster you should be fine, the best way is shutdown the cluster and migrate the servers to VM, setup the RDMs, modify the drivers for the VM hardware (make sure that you remove UPS software and things like Hardware Management Agents) and that's it.

Leonard...

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[unmercifuld]

> modify the drivers for the VM hardware

Can you elaborate on this point please what exactly needs to be modified and how, I too may have to P2V netware 6.5 and I would like it to be as clean as possible, is there a good website or process for this? I am not very experienced in NW.

[lholling]

Sure no problem.

Use CNEAMD.LAN for the Network card, do not worry that it is only a 10MB/s card because it will still go at the full speed that ESX gives it because there is no blocking on it.

For the disk I would recommend choosing the LSI Logic SCSI which means that the disk driver has to change to LSINPTNW.HAM

Leonard...

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