Vcenter 4.0 Stand alone Converter not seeing secondary data drive
Greetings experts...
I am in the process of trying to P2V an HP DL380 with 2 volumes. system drive and a data drive using the Vcenter Converter stand alone. I have moved over about 20 servers so far and have not ran into any issues. However, on this one server, the converter only detects the system drive on the source server. The source server is a W2K3 Sp2, with SQL 2005 installed on it. I have followed the convert best practices. I have stopped all services that are not needed. I have ran the converter remotely and locally on the server that we are trying to move. Made sure all VSS writers are in a stable state. The drive is a basic NTFS volume. 273gb sas drives on a smart array p600 controller.
Any help is greatly appreciated.... this is the last server I need to move over!
I am in the process of trying to P2V an HP DL380 with 2 volumes. system drive and a data drive using the Vcenter Converter stand alone. I have moved over about 20 servers so far and have not ran into any issues. However, on this one server, the converter only detects the system drive on the source server. The source server is a W2K3 Sp2, with SQL 2005 installed on it. I have followed the convert best practices. I have stopped all services that are not needed. I have ran the converter remotely and locally on the server that we are trying to move. Made sure all VSS writers are in a stable state. The drive is a basic NTFS volume. 273gb sas drives on a smart array p600 controller.
Any help is greatly appreciated.... this is the last server I need to move over!
Paul Solovyovsky
The reason most likely is that your destination datastore is configured with a 1MB block size which could only take 256GB volumes. Unfortnately you can't resize on the fly but if you have anohter datastore you should create it with a 8MB block size to convert volumes up to 2TB-512MB
ASKER
Thanks for the quick response. I apologize, I forgot to mention that the datastore is configured with a 4mb block size.
ASKER CERTIFIED SOLUTION
membership
This solution is only available to members.
To access this solution, you must be a member of Experts Exchange.
ASKER
I will give the Acronis a shot first....Should be able to plan some down at the end of the week...any limitations to the trial version?
Also, if you have time, could you possibly give detailed version of the second solution. I am new to Vcenter, getting the hang of things and have a good understanding but want to make sure I have the correct steps before I go have at it. Appreciate any time you take.
Thank you
Also, if you have time, could you possibly give detailed version of the second solution. I am new to Vcenter, getting the hang of things and have a good understanding but want to make sure I have the correct steps before I go have at it. Appreciate any time you take.
Thank you
For what you are trying to do Acronis or BESR will work find with trial version.
Second method:
1. P2V System Volume, leave it off the network
2. Create a volume on another VM
3. Use Robocopy to copy over flat file method to the volume
4. Copy the volume (vmdk and vmdk-flat) the the same folder that you P2V'd the original VM
5. Attach volume to the VM
Second method:
1. P2V System Volume, leave it off the network
2. Create a volume on another VM
3. Use Robocopy to copy over flat file method to the volume
4. Copy the volume (vmdk and vmdk-flat) the the same folder that you P2V'd the original VM
5. Attach volume to the VM
ASKER
sweet... thank you. I will give these a shot and see what happens. May be a few days. Will update you with the status. Thank you again. I Appreciate your time.
I had same issue sometime back and I was able to resolve this using old version of vmware converter which has the feature of creating a bootable CD using ISO image
http://www.vmware.com/download/converter/download.html
you may download the converter package from above link and it does support window 2003 32 and 64 bit.
below is release notes of the version that you need to download.
http://www.vmware.com/support/converter/doc/releasenotes_conv3.html
Try your luck and let me know.
Download the ISO and burn it in to a CD and boot via CD and proceed with on screen display.
below is manual
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/VMware_Converter_manual.pdf
http://www.vmware.com/download/converter/download.html
you may download the converter package from above link and it does support window 2003 32 and 64 bit.
below is release notes of the version that you need to download.
http://www.vmware.com/support/converter/doc/releasenotes_conv3.html
Try your luck and let me know.
Download the ISO and burn it in to a CD and boot via CD and proceed with on screen display.
below is manual
http://www.vmware.com/pdf/VMware_Converter_manual.pdf
ASKER
Thanks for the links. I will check it out!
ASKER
nithinprabhakar:
when I click on the link, the downloads only give me an .exe file. Is there an iso download or an option to create one after the install?
when I click on the link, the downloads only give me an .exe file. Is there an iso download or an option to create one after the install?
ASKER
Ok, tried the stand alone converter 3.0.3. Still no go. Found this following link,
http://www.ardamis.com/2009/04/25/cold-cloning-vmware-converter/
(link May help someone down the line)
Cool tool, but still didn't work. The PE environment picks up the disk and even has a disk manager in it that sees all the drives. When I launch the converter in the PE envirnment, still doesn't see the data drive. Going to try paulsolov's suggestions now. Thanks for all the suggestions.
http://www.ardamis.com/2009/04/25/cold-cloning-vmware-converter/
(link May help someone down the line)
Cool tool, but still didn't work. The PE environment picks up the disk and even has a disk manager in it that sees all the drives. When I launch the converter in the PE envirnment, still doesn't see the data drive. Going to try paulsolov's suggestions now. Thanks for all the suggestions.
Hi
Did you try a cold migration with vConverter BootCD?
In the last weeks I have P2V more than 20 HP 380(also many G4, G5 and G6), but for many reasons(one is to bypass many Migration issues) I use cold migration on every servers
Also I P2V many of them with Disks that are on one of the Storage(EMC or MSA). Converting this ones, need some special attention and the best practices, is not migrate this disks, but do the tasks on Storage level and then on the new VM
Hope this can help
Jail
Did you try a cold migration with vConverter BootCD?
In the last weeks I have P2V more than 20 HP 380(also many G4, G5 and G6), but for many reasons(one is to bypass many Migration issues) I use cold migration on every servers
Also I P2V many of them with Disks that are on one of the Storage(EMC or MSA). Converting this ones, need some special attention and the best practices, is not migrate this disks, but do the tasks on Storage level and then on the new VM
Hope this can help
Jail
ASKER
Bestway,
thanks for the reponse. I apologize for leaving out some details. Yes I tried using the vconverter bootcd, same problem. It just doesn't pick up the data drive. The data drive is a 3 drives in a raid 5 on a seperate controller. controller is smartarray p600
thanks for the reponse. I apologize for leaving out some details. Yes I tried using the vconverter bootcd, same problem. It just doesn't pick up the data drive. The data drive is a 3 drives in a raid 5 on a seperate controller. controller is smartarray p600
Hi
So if there is a separated controller, i the same, if the converter did not find the disk, before the vConverter BootCD start the image clone, just use F6 like in a windows installation, and add a fllopy disk, from the controller to vConverter knows the the contoller driver
But if you are using the last vConverter BootCD, this will knows all controller and i don't think it needs an extra driver
Jail
So if there is a separated controller, i the same, if the converter did not find the disk, before the vConverter BootCD start the image clone, just use F6 like in a windows installation, and add a fllopy disk, from the controller to vConverter knows the the contoller driver
But if you are using the last vConverter BootCD, this will knows all controller and i don't think it needs an extra driver
Jail
ASKER
Sorry for the late response. This was a production server and was only able to try these solutions during certain hours. Was able to use Acronis to create a backup and then use the converter to migrate the back up files to a new vm. Thanks everone for all the tips. Greatly appreciated.