Creating vmware "disks" from none vmware hard disks - physical to virtual conversion

[lanx]

Hello Everyone,

I currently have two hard drives of which both are running a linux distro (different). They are both configured and working perfectly for what we want to have done. When I need one, I simply unplug one hard drive and plug in the other. As you can see, this isn't the best route of doing this because I won't be able to run both hard disks with both linux distros at the same time. Hence, I figured vmware server would be a great solution.

My question is this: Is there a vmware application, or even third party application, to take a hard disk drive that has a linux distro on it and make a vmware image disk from it? Meaning I get a third hard drive, install vmware server on it, and then I simply copy over the two hard disks (which should now only be a single large vmware disk file now) so that I can run both the hard disks in a vmware disk format?

So baically, if I understand vmware correctly, I'll have one .VMDK files (and whatever other necessary file) per each hard disk that I currently have linux distros on. So essentially two .VMDK files total, so that I can run both hard disks (virtually) on the same hardware, at the same time!

*side now: The hardware is always a constant, so I am not sure if there is going to be drver issues or whatever when importing these physica (now virtual) hard drives into a linux distro with vmware running.

[Dave_Mishchenko]

VMware Converter has experimental support for creating VMs from Linux machines. It's free and you can get it from here: www.vmware.com/converter. Here are some links on using it to covert Linux to a VM.

Linux conversion - http://virtualaleph.blogspot.com/2007/04/cloning-linux-machine-with-converter.html

Linux conversion - http://www.vmware.com/community/thread.jspa?messageID=562582&#562582

Virtualize a Linux Server with VmWare Converter 3.0.1 - http://virtualaleph.blogspot.com/2007/05/virtualize-linux-server-with-vmware.html

Once you're done converting the installs to VMs, the hard drive contents will be encapsulated with a VMDK file. There will also be a VMX file which contains the settings for the VM and a few other files. Once you have them converted, they would run as VM from the VMDK and would no longer see the physical hardware you're using. The 3rd link above talks about using a rescue CD to fix the issue of drivers. You may consider just cloning one of the installs to a VM and then installing VMware Server on the other.

The free version of Converter allows only hot cloning, but you can use this Bart PE CD maker to create a copy of Converter that will allow for cold cloning as well. http://sanbarrow.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=879

[continuum]

This procedure works for any OS - it creates a vmdk from a real physical disk in one step - you just have to fix drivers yourself.

http://sanbarrow.com/moa-video-vdiskmanager-as-ghost.html