I am attempting to virtualise the legacy infrastructure of an operating datacentre. Many of the machines are a decade old and hardware lifespan is becoming an issue, so shifting them onto a virtual platform seems the best way of keeping the existing systems operating reliably while also allowing for cloning machines in order to then experiment with upgrading to current software on the clones without risking the service to customers.
However some of the existing machines have one or more "md" partitions (Linux software raid) and vCenter completely ignores these partitions when attempting to do a P2V conversion. From googling I gather this is expected behaviour, and suggested work-rounds involve creating the VM manually and then booting from the original installation media, however that isn't easily do-able here as whatever installation media there was is long-gone.
My questions:
1. What is the reason for ignoring software raid volumes?
2. Couldn't there be an option to just convert them to plain virtual disks?
3. Are there any known plans to overcome this limitation in future releases?
(note I'm partly asking this in the hope that the answers will benefit future users googling the same issue, hence the general questions)
