P2V for Winows NT Workstation

[skyenter]

Are there anyones performing P2V for Windows NT Workstation (Old PC to ESX 3.5)? Any gotcha or procedures? I know that I can use Vmware Converter to P2V (Windows NT)? Windows NT includes NT Server and NT Workstation?

Thx

[RParker]

You will have to use ghost or something similar. VM Converter won't do it.

Converter Standalone 4.0 supports the following guest operating systems:

• Windows 2000 SP4

• Windows XP Professional (32 bit and 64 bit)

• Windows 2003 (32 bit and 64 bit)

• Windows Vista (32 bit and 64 bit)

• Windows Server 2008 (32 bit and 64 bit)

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1 (32 bit)

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0 (32 bit and 64 bit)

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4.0 (32 bit and 64 bit)

• Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.0 (32 bit and 64 bit)

• Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 2.1 (32 bit)

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9 (32 bit and 64 bit)

• SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (32 bit and 64 bit)

• Ubuntu 5.x

• Ubuntu 6.x

• Ubuntu 7.x (32 bit and 64 bit)

[skyenter]

Review the below link. Windows NT is listsed.

Platforms

You can install VMware Converter 3 on the following platforms:

• Windows Vista

• Windows XP Professional

• Windows 2003 Server

• Windows 2000 Professional

• Windows 2000 Server

• Windows NT 4 SP4+ (IE5 or higher required)

VMware Converter can hot clone and reconfigure any local or remote physical machine running an operating system noted in Platforms

[Troy_Clavell]

here's a good KB, http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1004588

Make sure you use the 3.x converter. One thing I noticed when you used to P2V our NT devices, never workstation, only server, but still the same, is that we would have to copy the VMware Tools to the source physical machine first then run the tools install post conversion. Also, we didn't bring over the NIC. Finally, even though NT doesn't come with a defrag utility, we would install 3rd party tools and do a full checkdisk and defrag before we attempted the migration.

NT is tough sometimes.....

[skyenter]

Thanks for the quick response. I want to make sure of one comment that you posted. "Also, we didn't bring over the NIC. ". What is the meaning and how to do it? Have you P2Ved NT workstation before?

[Troy_Clavell · Accepted solution]

during the P2V process just uncheck the NIC. Then during the install of the VMware Tools it will install the drivers for the vNIC. I've never converted workstation only server

[RParker]

Well it's odd that VMC 4.0 does not support NT 4.0 but VMC 3.0 does. I work with latest technology, not previous versions, so I only posted what was listed for their current offering.

2 other products I tried (one of them was VConverter by Vizioncore) and Microsoft's own converter STILL do not support NT 4.0, FYI. So VM Converter may be the only product available that does support NT 4.0.

I guess asking the obvious question 'Can you upgrade NT to a newer OS" isn't an option, huh?

[TomHowarth]

Richard,

Many companies have requriements to stay on older Operating systems and applications, they may be running a key part of their enterprise and the ability to upgrade may be cost prohibitive or difficult without a major transformation project. an example of an enterprise that has dependancies on older techologies, is the financial services sector.

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Tom Howarth VCP / vExpert

VMware Communities User Moderator

Blog: www.planetvm.net

Contributing author for the upcoming book "VMware Virtual Infrastructure Security: Securing ESX and the Virtual Environment”.

[maishsk]

I have just recently converted a Windows NT 4 into an ESX VM with converter without any issues.

Maish

Systems Administrator & Virtualization Architect