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Export IP Addresses Before P2V Migrations

June 14th, 2009 |

Author: Rich Brambley

After VMware P2V (physical to virtual) migrations and VMTools installs the resulting new virtual network adapters of the virtual machines (VMs) often have to be manually reconfigured because the TCP/IP settings of the source servers were not preserved. I was reading comments on a post by Scott Lowe about the process for switching vSphere VMs to use the new paravirtualized network driver (VMXNET3) as well as a new paravirtualized SCSI driver (PVSCSI) when I found the following helpful use of netsh to export and later import back TCP/IP configs explained:

From a comment by Dave O. on Scott Lowe’s post vSphere Virtual Machine Upgrade Process

“To dump the IP config using netsh from a command line:

netsh interface ip dump > c:\ipconfig.txt

Since Windows will most likely see the new NIC as “Local Area Connection 2″ (or something similar) you have to modify the above text file and change the NIC name to match the new NIC’s name. Or change the new NIC’s name on the host to match what’s in the file above. Either way works. “

Here’s a screen shot of the output of the command on my desktop.

“To re-import it:

netsh -c interface –f c:\ipconfig.txt”

As Dave O. points out in the rest of his comment, the ability to save complex, multiple ip address TCP/IP settings and then reapply them later to the new virtual NIC can be a huge time saver.

If you also receive a message that the ip address is already in use then check out the post The IP address you have entered for this network adapter is already assigned to another adapter for instructions on how to remove the hidden network devices causing the trouble.

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Export IP Addresses Before P2V Migrations

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