Problems with P2V using VMWare Converter 3.03 with Source Windows 2000 to ESX 3.5
Hi - I'm somewhat new to ESX and this my first attempt at converting a physical machine to virtual using VMWare Converter V3.03. Initially, I tried the remote conversion option (installing agent on Win2K machine, with reboot) but the process would only allow new virtual to be defined for WKStation or Server. I choose to install VMConverter on Win2K physical machine and the option to direct new virtual machine to our ESX 3.5 server was successfully defined. We do not have a VCenter license at this time, only ESX. I have 3 'disks', 2 are multi-disk configurations (raid 1 and raid 5). The disks are set as drive C-raid1 17GB (4.6 GB free), drive D-17GB (13 GB free), drive E-raid5 102GB (34GB free). VMWare Converter picks up drive C as a 'multi' disk, but drive d&e tagged as 'disk'. When I initiate the conversion, the process fails very quickly with the following error:"ERROR: Failed to take snapshot of a source volume. Possible causes include not having any NTFS volumes on Windows XP or Windows 2003 source systems, and not having enough free disk space." I'm converting a Win2K Server, which I thought was possible with VMWare Converter - am I wrong here?. On source machine, in Windows Admin Tools, under Disk Management - All drives are setup as NTFS, C is Dynamic and D&E are Basic. I'm not sure why this fails, any help would be appreciated. The source machine is also a domain controller, I've read where this can be an issue as well. Thanks in advance.
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Thanks - this approach worked well. The old physical server has been taken off-line and the 'new' virtual machine runs pretty much as expected. I do have one issue, due to the install of .net v2.0 framework required when installing symantec's app, I receive an error "aspnet_perf.dll failed", which can fill the event log. I'm looking into this now, but I do appreciate the soluton given - thanks.
For the source login are you using an admin account? As well where you are trying to convert the physical machine to a virtual do you have 188 Gb allocated for the conversion?
ASKER
Yes, if I recall I did use the Admin account. I don't recall all the details on disk conversion, but after the virtual machine files were created from Symantec, I'm pretty sure, I coud import them into ESX and re-allocate drive sizes prior to import (i.e. I needed to increaes one of the drives and decreased the size of one other).
Other wise your on the right track.
The idea of virtualising your Domain Controllers is very dangerous.
A DC being virtual is not the issue and works fine, infact it's likely bettr virtualised than physical as you have better redundancy ( if you have vmotion and multiple hosts)
The issue with Virtualising DC is not the fact that you can snapshot them but the issue of when in snapshot you can then roll it back.. If you could prevent a DC's snapshot from being rolled back and only allow all snap shots ti=o be commits it wouldn't be an issue.
VM have no solution for this on ESX yet.