Migrating Physical Server to VM

[soda0091]

I am planning on migrating a few if our larger servers and I am wondering witch method to use in order to get the quickest P2V migration. I have used both the cold and hot methods, but is there any performance tuning that can be done in order to help to speed up the migration? The servers range between 400G-1T in size.

Thanks.

[Lightbulb]

Is any of the data on SAN? In which case you could just present to VM as RDM after OS volumes have been moved.

I am not aware of any tuning that can be done specific to Vmware to help (Not that there might be some I have been offline for awhile) Try to place system in same broadcast domain (Subnet) as Vmware environment so as not to have to deal with firewall interface as choke point, your other system will thank you also

[soda0091]

Thanks for the quick reply. The data does reside on a Equal Logic SAN. From what I have been researching it looks like most admins are doing a P2V on the OS and applications drives and then robocopying the rest of the data afterwards. Is this your recommended method? One of the servers will be a DB server. Does the same still apply to this scenerio?

[Lightbulb · Accepted solution]

What i was thinking was that if the Data files are located on a different drive that the OS and application files you could p2v the OS/APP drive and then you have your new VM minus the data. Then present the existing SAN LUNs (Used previously by the physical system) to the VM as virtual RDM . Mount the LUNs and assign drivel letter (for windows or same mount point for NIX) previously used by physical system a then you are done.

This method involves least amount data transfer and associated downtime. Of course it is dependent on whether your DB data files are on separate LUN from your app files.