Virtualizing two HP DL380 G5 and mounting them into a HP DL580 G5

[kanashirosan]

Hello:

I'm new with Vmware and I have some questions about implementing cloning

Scenario: We are working now with two physical servers and we are planning to convert them to virtual images with Vmware Converter in order to mount them into a HP DL580 G5 with VMWARE ESX Server 3.5.0.

Source physical servers we want to clone:

Web/App Server: HP DL380 G5 Pentium Xeon de 3.6 Ghz. (two CPU) 8 GB RAM, 6x144 GB hard disks in a RAID 5 with Smart Array.

Database Server: HP DL380 G5 Pentium Xeon de 3.6 Ghz (two CPU) 8 GB RAM, 6x144 GB in a RAID 5 with Smart Array.

Destination Server that has installed Vmware ESX Server:

- HP DL580 G5

- 8 CPU x 2.933 Ghz

- Intel Xeon X7350

- 16 Gigabytes RAM (10 GB free)

- One 410 Gigabytes Hard Disk with 157 GB free.

- One 60 Gigabytes Hard Disk with 58 GB free.

Questions:

- is this a feasible implementation?

- What problems could happen in this process?

- What cloning process would you recomend? hot one or cold one?

Thanks a lot

Agustín Kanashiro

DaBrein Solutions

www.dabrein.com

[kjb007]

Yes, this is feasible. Remember, when you convert, you are using vmware virtual hardware, so your source hardware is not as important. Your concern should be whether the guest is supported, which if it's x86/x64 based, it most likely is

You'll actually have to remove the hardware specific modules, for example hp drivers, nic agents, server agents, as they are not on hp hardware anymore, from an OS perspective.

The storage you move to must be large enough to support the drives you are using, if you plan to keep the configuration exactly the same. If you're in a RAID5, then your array size is ~ 720GB. Is that split between multiple logical drives, or is it all one big drive? Since you'll be converting to VMFS, if you're using one large drive, you'll have to make sure your vmfs block size is at least 4 MB to support a disk over 512 GB.

If you're running Windows, a hot clone will work just fine, unless you're running a domain controller.

-KjB

[kanashirosan]

KJB, Thanks!

your explanation was very clear and I will try what you suggest.

Greetings from Argentina

Agustin