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khincung
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VMware converter 5.5 failed with error Unable to partition the destination disks

I tried to convert a physical linux centos server to virtual. However, I received an error message at 1% as below,

Error: Unable to partition the destination disks.

FAILED: An error occurred during the conversion:'CalculateGPTPartitionLocations failed!'


Converting GPT partition is available from vCenter converter 5.1 and above, so GPT partition on source server would not be an issue.

Tried many ways such as changing datastores but still receive the same error message.

Anyone encounter this before?

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patanassov
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Hello

Unfortunately there is a bug in Converter with Linux P2V when the destination disk is larger than 2TB (it is not it being GPT, it is the size). Sorry for the inconvenience.

The workaround would be to shrink the volumes at the destination and/or split them across several disk. Another workaround would be to leave unchecked large volumes and clone them manually after conversion.

Another bad luck is that these workarounds don't seem not possible in your case - the root volume occupies about 4.3 TB, and both 'boot' and '\' are needed to perform a conversion with reconfiguration.

The options I can think of are:

  - do a manual P2V, i.e. create the destination machine (with partitions, logical and basic volumes created and formatted), clone the data (e.g. Converter uses tar over ssh), and manually configure the VM. The last step involves, fixing /etc/fstab, installing GRUB, and remaking initrd image

  - install anew and copy the data

  - eventually split the root volume on the source machine if possible and then convert it. E.g. add a new disk temporarily and move some of the data so that all volumes become smaller than 2TB.

Regards,

Plamen

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6 Replies
POCEH
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Could you upload log bundle for investigation?

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khincung
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Checked the logs and it appear to have the same error message,

msg = "An error occurred during the conversion: 'CalculateGPTPartitionLocations failed!'"

Not sure if the vCenter converter still have issue converting GPT partition on linux

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patanassov
VMware Employee
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Hello

Unfortunately there is a bug in Converter with Linux P2V when the destination disk is larger than 2TB (it is not it being GPT, it is the size). Sorry for the inconvenience.

The workaround would be to shrink the volumes at the destination and/or split them across several disk. Another workaround would be to leave unchecked large volumes and clone them manually after conversion.

Another bad luck is that these workarounds don't seem not possible in your case - the root volume occupies about 4.3 TB, and both 'boot' and '\' are needed to perform a conversion with reconfiguration.

The options I can think of are:

  - do a manual P2V, i.e. create the destination machine (with partitions, logical and basic volumes created and formatted), clone the data (e.g. Converter uses tar over ssh), and manually configure the VM. The last step involves, fixing /etc/fstab, installing GRUB, and remaking initrd image

  - install anew and copy the data

  - eventually split the root volume on the source machine if possible and then convert it. E.g. add a new disk temporarily and move some of the data so that all volumes become smaller than 2TB.

Regards,

Plamen

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khincung
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I backup most of the files on another server and delete the files so that the source server will have less than 2TB. I then use VMware converter to convert the source server by altering the destination disk space to less than 2TB and run conversion which success without any error. Yes, VM converter does have issue converting 2TB source server.

After converting, I get the issue : Kernel panic - not syncing: Attempted to kill init! but this can be solve from the link --> https://communities.vmware.com/thread/325984

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jinho10
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My destination storage is 1.8TB and the source is 200GB with CentOS 6.5.. but still get the same error "Error: Unable to partition the destination disks"... Can anyone tell me how to workaround this?

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patanassov
VMware Employee
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This should be something different

Pls upload the task log bundle

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