Need to know how to turn an old Novell Netware 3.12 server into a virtual machine to run on Vmware Workstation 5.5.3

[Albannach1776]

I'm a complete newbie at this. I have an old Novell server network with one 3.12 server and one ms-dos workstation running the Novell client software. The underlying OS on moth server and workstation os MS-Dos 5.0. The hardware is old and will fail at some point.

I need to move the whole thing to virtual machines. The final goal is to run the Novell server in a vmware player on Windows 2003 Server and to run the Novell workstation in a vmware player running on a Windows XP workstation, so that the old, unreliable hardware can be scrapped.

My VMware software is VMWare Workstation 5.5.3 build-34685. The host operating system, as reported by VMWare Workstation, is Windows XP Professional 5.1.2600, Service Pack 3.

I have a backup of the entire disk of the Novell Server in a tar archive.

I have never done anything like this before, and I have no idea of how to even get started.

I'm going to need lots of help.

What do I do first.?

[continuum · Accepted solution]

3.12 is a really old version - I am not even sure it will work ?

.

Anyway - first try to create a "fresh" installation of Netware 3.12 - if that works you can use that as a reference.

Try to set

guestOS = "netware4"

in the vmx-file

___________________________________

description of vmx-parameters:

VMware-liveCD:

[Albannach1776]

OK, that is what I am doing, and it seems to be working so far. I didn't have a netware4 option available, so I used netware5. I'm in the middle of creating the SYS volume now. (Very time-consuming.)