Single VMDK for linux P2V converted physical machine.

[islammanjurul]

I am having issue with a cloud based linux machine, which I want to bring on-premise.

The instance is hosted at Oracle Cloud, based on Oracle Linux. The instance has a single disk named xvdb, which then partition in two part xvdb1 and xvdb2.

I have successfully converted it, however a strange issue is here that the converted VM has two VMDKs, I have tried to dig deeper but found no option on vmware converter to retain a single VMDK.

Kindly see the attached files - one is the shell screenshot of the actual cloud machine and another one is the option available on VMware Converter.

Can anyone help me merge this two VMDKs together and will it work? or any option to make converter use a single VMDK layout instead of two or more?

[patanassov]

Hello,

When LVM is used Converter creates a separate vmdk for each volume group. If you do the conversion with changing to basic volumes, you can move all volumes to a single disk (see the wizard data-to-copy, advanced, destination layout). Otherwise the VG is a separate vmdk, this is by design.

HTH,

Plamen

[islammanjurul]

So that means there is no option for single VMDK but how about merging both the disk using vdiskmanager? Will the VM boot from the merged single VMDK? or it will fail?

[patanassov]

It will almost certainly fail unless you teak some configuration. I haven't done that, so what follows is speculation.

I suppose the boot partition is on the first volume (xvdb1). If you merge the second disk to the first, at least grub.cfg will likely remain accurate. However you will likely need to recreate the initrd image; /etc/fstab will be inaccurate; perhaps LVM metadata, too.