P2V'd server, now need to V2P it back again

[MrBiscuit]

Hello all,

So I'm in the middle of a fairly lengthy Datacentre try-to-p2v-everything-please-mr-vmware-man project and due to the target being a set number of conversions (yes, one of those) I've been required to process a number of servers which I would otherwise leave alone.

Inevitably some of these servers have needed to be rolled back for performance reasons, but only one of them I'm concerned about here.

I currently am looking at an Altiris NS server running on top of Windows 2003 SP2 Std32 edition, due to the size of the deployment it's managing it's running somewhat sluggishly on a 4core / 4Gb ESX3.5 VM built on a Dell PowerEdge R900 cluster.

The original hardware was a fairly new HP DL385 G2 on which it ran fine, and the goal is to put it back there.The catch is that they've done an upgrade since then so I can no longer just rollback the data, I have to V2P.

In the P2V process I've uninstalled the HP management software and agents, but not removed the drivers from system32 (thankfully), disk sizes remain the same and monitoring software on the box hasn't changed. I still have the original hardware in it's pre-migration state, and a clone of that current state pre-P2V changes as a backup should things go horribly wrong.

I've got a provisional process in mind, what I'm looking for is suggestions and gotcha's from people who've gone down this path

Planned Process:

1. Shutdown VM

2. Snapshot

3. Start VM, uninstall VMware tools

4. (Potentially at this point I should set Windows to restart with the Original Compaq Smart Array Storage Driver, not certain)

5. Shutdown VM again.

6. Ghost VM to portable drive.

7. Have cup of tea (it's a big server).

8. Ghost to original hardware

9. Have additional cups of tea.

10. Boot up original hardware, offline to the network

11. Reinstall compaq agents from original versions from clone via VMware Player

12. Setup networking etc

13. Test.

Any thoughts? The main concern I have is reinstating the original driver structure, but I suspect that Windows will do that itself as long as the storage driver loads correctly at boot.

[AndreTheGiant]

Symantec BESR, Acronis and other P2P tools can be used to make also a V2P.

I'm not sure that also Ghost can work (probably not if you have removed old devices).

Andre

[IB_IT]

When you did the original P2V, did you change the # of CPU's? If so, you will want to change the HAL back to multiprocessor. Not sure if it's worth it for just one server, but have you looked into PlateSpin.com? They have a product that will P2V and V2P..

[MrBiscuit]

Andre, I suspect you are correct about the old device removal. Unfortunately I don't have any budgetary clearance to purchase a license for Acronis and apparently the trial of their Windows product doesn't enable the driver injection feature.

Do you know of a free tool that will do the dissimilar hardware restore?

@IB_IT: Both servers are multi-cpu, so the HAL should be fine

So far I have conducted all P2V's using primarily Vizioncore's vConverter, and falling back to the old-school VMware coldclone CD when necessary.

The client heard they were 'free'...

[Wimo]

I've had success using BESR mentioned by Andre. It has a feature called Restore AnyWare for restoring to dissimilar hardware.

[continuum · Accepted solution]

2003 can be V2Ped with BartPE and DriverInjectionGUI.

Requires a bit of manual work - but the tools are free




___________________________________

VMX-parameters- Workstation FAQ -[ MOA-liveCD|http://sanbarrow.com/moa241.html] - VM-Sickbay

[sudiady]

I would recomend Ultimate-P2V. Check these articles:

http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/?p=222

http://www.rtfm-ed.co.uk/?p=183

http://geekswithblogs.net/WallabyFan/archive/2006/07/07/84343.aspx

[continuum]

that would help for P2V but not for V2P

DriverInjectionGUI can be used for both




___________________________________

VMX-parameters- Workstation FAQ -[ MOA-liveCD|http://sanbarrow.com/moa241.html] - VM-Sickbay