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While troubleshooting poor performing VMs this week I was explaining to a customer the process of trying to downgrade the multi processor HAL of a Windows VM that was created by a P2V migration with VMware Converter. I ended up sending them a link to an older VMware Communities forum thread in which Mike Laverick of RTFM Education provides a quick how to guide. I also wrote (and sent the customer) a post earlier this year that offers similar advice, but P2V multi processor servers to single processor VMs instructs you to install a patch specifically for Windows Server 2003 VMs which then allows you to downgrade to a single processor.

The other difference worth mentioning between these two posts is the links to the Microsoft DevCon tool. Although VMware will not officially support using this tool on VMs, using this utility for forcing a HAL downgrade is possible when all else fails.

Check out the following instructions copied here and the various links in this post for more information.

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While attempting to clean up unnecessary virtual hardware after several P2V migrations this week, I was unable to remove the virtual USB Controller from new virtual machines. I got an uneditable device warning pop up window that said “Internal problem: The system information reported by the host for ‘VirtualUSBController’ is inconsistent. This device cannot currently be edited.”

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I was helping a customer P2V a large development SQL server this week and ran into a VMFS configuration issue that failed the conversion. We were using the Converter Enterprise for VirtualCenter 2.5 plugin. Almost as soon as we kicked off the job it failed with an error starting with “file size is larger than the maximum size supported by datastore”. The VMFS LUN we were using as the target was an empty 1.5 TB volume, and the new VM consisted of 2 virtual disks that totaled roughly 450 GB. We had plenty of room, but the problem was not the available storage space. Instead, the issue was that we exceeded the maximum possible .vmdk size for the default VMFS 1MB block setting.

When you add new storage to an ESX host and you format the LUN with the VMFS file system you have to choose what block size setting you want to use. See the screenshot for the dropdown box used to make this choice. Notice the Maximum file size description supposedly provided to help you understand this setting. It’s hardly intuitive in my opinion, so let me try to translate - Choosing the block size determines what maximum possible .vmdk size can be created on this LUN.

If you do not change the default setting when you format a VMFS LUN

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Why is it that migrating to virtual infrastructure (VI) is most often considered to be the responsibility of the server administrators? Anyone who has already done it can tell you it involves much more than servers and hardware. Even for small companies, virtualizing servers potentially (and usually) involves networking, storage, security, and infrastructure services changes. In fact, it is often as involved and complex as moving your physical servers from one data center to another.

So why is there a perception that implementing VI is only a server team responsibility? Obviously, one reason is because on the surface it’s about installing and consolidating operating systems on server hardware. Another reason is because VMware, the source for all the interest in migrating to VI to date, has done such a great job marketing their products as just server installs.

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When planning P2V migrations there is always a handful of servers that have huge disk requirements. A network file share could be as large as several terabytes. User Home Directories can also cause large, cumbersome servers that present unique challenges when migrating to virtual infrastructure. Given that VMware VI3 has a 2 TB VMFS volume limitation as well as a 2 TB .vmdk limitation, there is a better option. Consolidate your shares to a

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It’s good to see other administrators discussing whether or not to P2V domain controllers, and even better to see that others are recommending the same as I did in my recent post Small business P2V migrations. VMware Communities: VMWare esx 3.5& Windows Server 2003 … is a forum discussion where this topic is discussed in detail. What’s great about this discussion is that it goes beyond the P2V strategy and in to whether or not all DCs in your environment should be VMs.

Some highlights from the forum discussion:

“So it is a bad idea to convert dc’s from physical to virtual correct?

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When I hear “we only have 6 servers so our migration to VI should be quick and easy, right?” I hesitate. Not because it can’t be done, but because of how it should be done and the probable challenges. The expectation is usually that the physical servers should be virtualized as is. The reality is often that in order to achieve the best VI design the customer needs to separate applications and services.

A typical small office server infrastructure is usually similar to the following:

The exact placement of the different applications and services varies, but the result is the same. A small company P2V project really should be an infrastructure redesign project so that the features and benefits of VI can be fully leveraged. The following are my recommendations for the VI design of a small company like the example.

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One of the major disadvantages of VMware Converter is that you do not have the option to choose how many virtual cpus (vCPU) your new VM will have. If your source physical server has 2 CPU sockets your target VM will end up with 2 vCPUs. If your source server’s CPUs are dual core your target VM ends up with 4 vCPUs. It’s a well known best practice to minimize the number of multi processor VMs in your virtual infrastructure. So, how do you make sure servers that you p2v result in single processor VMs?

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One of the advantages of a virtual infrastructure is the ability to cost effectively replicate your production systems to a secondary disaster recovery environment. Not only can you do this with virtual machines, but there are now several options available to allow physical servers to be replicated to a stand-by VM. This post will briefly cover several products and solutions and provide multiple commercial options and a free alternative.

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It hasn’t happened to me yet, but enabling the Converter Enterprise plug-in apparently can crash your VC 2.5 Server. VMware Communities: Enabling Converter Enterprise Plugin … is a forum thread about the problem with some troubleshooting attempts and the resolution. From the VMware forum:

I had exactly the same problem and this was caused by a dll file confict, in my case I had an old version of the ssleay32.dll file in my windows\system32 directory. I removed the file and it now works correctly.

Yellow-bricks.com also reports on the problem with 2 posts and an alternative fix in the follow up - Part II post:

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Yellow-bricks.com posted a quick article today about successfully p2v-ing a SLES server. (Yes, I know that’s redundant but it just doesn’t sound right saying “p2v a SLES”). The post was of interest to me because I briefly attempted to do the same back in December without success.

In my experience we attempted to use the VMware Converter Cold Clone CD but got a message similar to unrecognized operating system. I do not remember the exact error message, but the VMware Converter Live CD was unusable . The customer then used Ghost to make an image of the physical server, and restored that image to a “bare-virtual-metal” VM. When booting the SLES VM the boot volume was not found, or unmountable. Since this particular VM

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If you are in a hurry and want to quickly get a “guesstimate” of power and cooling savings from server consolidation check out an online calculator from Platespin. The PowerRecon Power and Cooling Savings Calculator is pre-populated with commonly accepted industry values and essentially makes it very easy for you to enter the number of physical servers to match your datacenter and then hit the “calculate” button. Not only does it give you savings figures, but it provides some basic virtual host consolidation ratios for you too.

Platespin is using some big assumptions in these calculations. From the calculator’s page:

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