Migrate z/Linux server to ESX 3.5 Server

[IJ-GSS]

Hi,

I got a customer who is running his business applications on z/Linux but would like to migrate those in-house applications to ESX server and he need ESX servers to be clustered for providing fault tolerance.

I researched and found articles on how we can migrate Linux to ESX Server but not sure if we can follow the same procedure for Z/Linux as well, would appreciate if anyone shed some light on it.

Links which I am referring for migrating Linux to ESX server.

http://communities.vmware.com/blogs/JoeHan/2008/06/11/successful-physical-to-virtual-p2v-conversion-...

http://virtualaleph.blogspot.com/2007/05/virtualize-linux-server-with-vmware.html

Manual Physical Machine to Virtual Machine Conversion (P2V) Instructions for Linux

http://www.vmwiz.com/

http://communities.vmware.com/search.jspa?resultTypes=BLOG_POST&resultTypes=DOCUMENT&resultTypes=MES...

Regards

IJ - GSS

[jobl]

Well you can't as the Z platform is not an X86 platform.

The customer needs to install new x86 Linux vm's and then port the in-house applications to x86

[IJ-GSS]

Jobl,

Appreciate your reply.

Could you please elaborate the term which you mentioned in your answer that "port the in-house applications to x86", do you mean that customer needs to re-install those application on x86 Linux, move the data to these boxes and then move those images to ESX or is there a way to migrate images to x86 Linux boxes and once the movement is complete to x86 then we can use Vm converter to convert images to ESX server.

Hope to get the reply soon.

IJ

[jobl]

If the application is directly installable on X86 Linux I would just make new VM's reinstall the application and move the data. (Ofcourse after heavily testing) But I guess they atleast have to recompile it on/for x86.

If you for some reason choose to first migrate it to physical x86 boxes (You still have to do the steps I told you before) you can p2v them afterwards to ESX but I can't see any reason for doing that.

Regards

/Johan

[IJ-GSS]

Thanks a lot for your response, have a nice day

IJ

[TLKern]

To move an application from Linux on an IBM zSeries (zLinux for short), the application must be recompiled for the x86 architecture. Most production zLinux systems are now 64bit and the underlying zArch instruction set is a great deat differenet from the x86. If the application is really web or client frontends to a database on zLinux, then you could use the database utilities to export the data and inmport into an x86 version of the database and redirect the clients to the new home. If the application is NOT compiled but is PHP or Java or Rexx, then you would not need to recompile. But if it is in C or FORTRAN or COBOL, then you must recompile. If it is written in Assembler then you must REWRITE it.

/Tom Kern