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  • 1.  Best Practice for converting a dying server

    Posted Sep 16, 2009 12:59 AM

    Hi Everyone, a client of mine has a very old server (hardware) running Windows 2000 Server SP4. This server has a software mirror on it and frankly I think it's the only thing keeping this server alive right now, it has 1.8 GB's free on the primary partition and we are having a great deal of trouble converting it.

    I have tried Versions 4 and the latest version of converter, they keep failing at 50 or 97%, the errors are very generic and the forums state it has to do with the software mirror.

    My question is this, what would you recommend to try before breaking the software mirror?

    I was going to try the following, please feel free to comment and let me know if you have had any success with these items:

    1. try an older version of VMCOnverter but use the Cold Boot option from a converter CD.

    2. Try imaging the server with Ghost, Arconis or Livestate

    Any other ideas? This is a production server that needs to be converted before it dies.

    Any assistance is greatly appreciated.



  • 2.  RE: Best Practice for converting a dying server

    Posted Sep 16, 2009 06:37 PM

    For servers that the VMware converter is not working on, we've used Acronis EXTREMELY successfully. And the great thing about ESX 3.5 and VC2.5 is that it can recognize the image files that Acronis creates and import them as VM's which I have done successfully as well. Acronis has a Universal Restore option that allows you to take an image of a Windows/Linux server, and apply that image to ANY type of hardware wheher it is virtual or physical. And for those famliar with Norton Ghost back in the 90's, it does a block by block (sector by sector) copy of the disks so no data is lost, just be sure to have the right SCSI adapter loaded before an image is taken if you are going to different hardware. When going to a virtual machine, no special driver needed as the import process handles all of it.



  • 3.  RE: Best Practice for converting a dying server

    Posted Oct 02, 2009 05:39 PM

    Ok, so if I have a dying windows 2000 box with Acronis Image Echo Server on it and another new box running VM Server 2.0, how can I get the acronis image on a blank VM?



  • 4.  RE: Best Practice for converting a dying server

    Posted Oct 02, 2009 05:47 PM

    If you have an image of the dying server (*.tib), within Virtual Center you can choose to import a machine. Using the wizard, you would choose other when it asks for what do you want to import. It will allow you select the *.tib file of the Acronis image and it will create the VM from the file. I personally have only imported Acronis images of other VM's, never tried importing an Acronis image of a physical server into a virtual environment although I do believe it would be possible provided you use the VMware Converter. It also allows imports of 3rd party images which is what the Acronis image would be for VMware. Hope that helps.

    P.S. - You could try installing the VMware SCSI controller driver prior to taking your image. It might help with the conversion process. When we use Acronis to upgrade the hardware for our servers (so we do not have to completely rebuild them from scratch) and are going to completely different hardware, we have to install the new controller driver so when the image is laid down on the new hardware it can boot the OS from the new controller.



  • 5.  RE: Best Practice for converting a dying server

    Posted Oct 05, 2009 11:34 AM

    hai

    i agree with sterls27 :smileygrin: , p2v always fails if it does not have vmscsi controller , which helps to read the vmfs , try to install the vmsci controller on the source machine and follow the block size rule (ex 1mb= 256 gb of disk size ) to p2v the old machine

    wish you best of luck

    vamshi



  • 6.  RE: Best Practice for converting a dying server

    Posted Sep 18, 2009 10:08 PM

    I encountered errors like these and ran the Microsoft utility to scan for and repair disk errors Scandisk (?) or something similar. After the utility ran, I had no more errors converting. It's worth a try anyway. Good luck.