P2V accross 2003 AD Forest

[BijuVMenon]

We have two forest abc.org and xyz.org and no trust between them, basically one is new company acquired by client.

We have to P2V one Physical server server01.abc.org to server01.xyz.org

only xyz.org has vmware vcenter environment and abc.org has only physical servers.

has anybody performed such activity and could share any steps / best practises followed in such situations.

we plan the following:

1) Get all ports opened between two networks to help import the physical to vcenter

2) remove vm from old domain to workgroup and add to new domain

Question is this has many legacy apps with SQL installed, so when we change the domain the SID will change and all the apps and SQL defunctional?

Second option is to build new VM and try install the legacy application

Any help would be much appreciated.

[RParker]

Not sure what you mean.  It's basic imaging of a server.  How would you do this physically?  You ghost the image.. same thing with VM, you are imaging a physical server with a virtual one, simple.

No need to be concerned about trusts or even renaming a machine.  It's identical to replacing a server with a different one that's all you are doing (apparently).

[logiboy123]

The real question is how much risk are you willing to take?

With legacy applications it is almost always better to rebuild them on a clean OS and fully document the system that you build.

Regards,

Paul

[RParker]

Paul Kelly wrote:

With legacy applications it is almost always better to rebuild them on a clean OS and fully document the system that you build.

That would defeat the whole purpose of virtualizing in the first place.. and with legacy apps it's pretty much the MAIN reason you do a P2V because you don't have the install media or the ability to reinstall, that was the entire reason why Virtualization conversion was invented.. To preserve without reinstalling.

Virtual environments you can run legacy apps easier especailly with older OS like Windows XP / 2000.

[logiboy123]

I seem to have communicated the wrong idea.

P2V is great for all the reasons that you give.

My point is that rebuilding a physical server as a new virtual machine using a standard template with the latest OS is usually going to be cleaner. Most importantly however it affords the engineer a great opportunity to revisit the documentation or build some from scratch if there was none. Further is gives the engineer the opportunity to gain a greater understanding of the application and to make sure the OS and application are as up to date as possible.

Obviously this approach would require;

1) Time to implement

2) Installation software and instructions

Generally speaking if I have the choice between a rebuild as a VM and a P2V, then I will choose the former if I have time and tools to do so. Further there are some systems which should not be P2Ved such as domain controllers.

Regards,

Paul

[BijuVMenon]

thanks all for the reply. I'm from Server side of the team and our application team don't have time and expertise in the application front (approx 8 application) and SQL database. But figured that the whole project of P2V would not have a high success rate as the Security Identifier (SID) would change as soon as we change the domain to the new domain. Hence wanted to confirm if any application like SQL database would work if we change the domain. Also many credentials are hardcoded in the application so changing of domain would effect that too. Hence planning to install it on fresh OS Win 2000 for compatibility reason. And planning to use same credentials in the new domain, but not sure that will work. If anybody has done P2V of any SQL database or similar across domain with success then would definately love to get the steps taken to resolve the SID issue.