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Kara Marfia
Asked: 2009-06-03 10:12:28 +0800 CST

Will VMWare Converter P2V a non-ACPI 2000 server?

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SCVMM is unable to handle this conversion - just tells me flat out that my Proliant 3000 (yes, go ahead and laugh) isn't a P2V option unless I upgrade it to 2003 server for an online conversion.

Just wondered if anyone had already skinned this cat before I get started.

[edit] I should mention that the eventual destination is a HyperV server, so I'll be putting the poor VM through a SCVMM conversion to VHD, in case that has any impact on the answer.

Update The .vmdk from the Converter works phenomenally ... in vmware player. Converting with either vmdk2vhd or SCVMM results in a machine that freezes during windows load, or a blue screen.

Reading up teaches me that VMWare machines boot to SCSI, and hyper V CANNOT boot from SCSI, which is what the converter is supposed to remedy. So far I've tried removing scsi devices before the conversion (didn't help) and replacing the %windir%\system32\hal.dll with one from a functioning VM of the same OS/patch (no joy).

Any thoughts/ideas?

virtualization vmware-player physical-to-virtual scvmm

3 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Best thing to do would be to fire up the VMware converter on the physical machine and give it a try. I used it on a number of V2V migrations when we implemented ESX. I took a number of MS Virtual Server images and converted them without incident.

    For my P2V's though I used an HP tool that in the end I think was more trouble than it was worth. The client side HAD to be run from an XP machine, and only worked on newer Proliant hardware.

    Looking back I wish that I had tried the VMware converter on a P2V.

    If you do try it I'd be interested to know how it ends up.

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  2. Tried both SCVMM and VMWare converter for P2V migrating servers, including old ones (compaq ML370 G1-G2, yes the ones with dual P3 450.. yup, and running win2K too).

    The reason I tried Converter is that SCVMM flat out refused to work with win2K SP3, requiring SP4, and the server was running some extremely picky legacy software and wasn't backed up well enough for me to risk installing SP4 (i didn't migrate it eventually - reasons below)

    I did 3 migrations with the converter. Two went absolutely fine, a win2K sp3 PC and a winXP sp1 pc. On the third one, a win2K sp4 PC, the converter managed to murder the machine, blue-screening it on boot after an attempted migration. This spooked me enough to refuse to risk my server on it.

    However, it did migrate the other two machines perfectly, including one that SCVMM wouldn't touch with a stick, so overall, I'd give it a positive look. If you have good backups of the server (Os drive images and complete backups of the data stores) - I'd give it a try. It's a good tool, despite the occasional screw ups.

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  3. Currently downloading Server, in hopes that I can add a drive before the conversion, per this method.

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