Migrate existing system to VMWare

[RAlltuck]

How does one go about migrating an existing server system to another piece of hardware running VMWare?

I have the Acronis True Image and Universal Restore products which allows me to move an image of my server to another piece of hardware. Can I use that to move a server image to my new VMWare server? If so, how?

Thanks for any and all help.

Russ

[sbeaver]

Why not start with VMware's free product the VMConverter

http://www.vmware.com/download/converter/

[RDPetruska]

Try the (free) VMware Converter 3.

[RAlltuck]

Thanks for the suggestions and it will be the next thing I do. I am obviously very new to VMWare.

Thanks for the help.

Russ....

[sbeaver]

No points for anyone's answers that were helpful? Tough Crowd!!

[RAlltuck]

SBeaver....

Sorry for not adding points. I am new to this forum and did not know that points were to be assigned. I did give credit to the first to answer my questions.

Next time I will know better. Thanks again to everyone for the quick answer. Being new to the VNWare world, your answers saved me a lot of time and it is appreciated.

Russ....

[GlenMarquis2]

VMware converter gets my vote, too.

[eddiefdz]

Try the VMconverter but just so that you are aware it may not work with all your servers. In my case, i was able to use VMConverter for about 6 of my servers but for the other 3 i used Acronis True Image. What i did was that I syspreped the Windows Box, I then ran Acronis true image and imaged the hardrives to my file server. I then created a new VM image and booted with the acronis boot cd and dumped the image to my new VMguest image. Everything worked perfectly. Goodluck!

[RAlltuck]

My usage of the VM Converter provided mixed results. On one of my medium sized systems, it took 6 attempts to get a good conversion. The other 5 attempts that failed indicated that there was some type of disconnect. On a smaller system it took 3 attempts, and on a yet smaller system I was able to convert in one attempt. I was going to try the 'cold' conversion and then found out the the Converter CD comes when you buy the product (we are still in evaluation mode of VMWare in general).

Once a system was 'converted' it appears to run just fine, as long as you leave the console running (another issue I am trying to learm more about).

[RAlltuck]

BTW...

Thanks for the info on Acronis. It is very helpful. Having more than one way to convert a system is good.

Russ...