VM /ETC

Archive for the ‘P2V’ Category

I’ve had my share of difficulties with the HP Server Utilities after a P2V migration. Granted, when you are building a new server the SmartStart CD makes life easy for completing the “Setup and installation for HP ProLiant ML and DL 300, 500 and 700 series and HP ProLiant BL Servers and supported server options”, but when that server restarts as a VM with the HP software still installed and running it is sluggish and slow. Extremely sluggish and slow in my experience.

After having to boot several VMs in Windows Safe Mode in order to prevent the various HP utilities and drivers from attempting to load I finally got a clue and made sure I disabled all HP Services before running the P2V conversion. That made the start up as a new VM better, but I still had to spend some quality time with Add/Remove Programs in the Windows Control Panel to uninstall all of those HP programs!

You may be thinking “OK. You should just uninstall all the HP Programs and Drivers before the P2V.” I could, but there goes my safety net, fall back plan. I want the physical server to remain operational exactly as it was in case something unexpected prevents the P2V from succeeding. It’s rare, but if it does happen I want to be able to power back on the physical server. Maintenance windows are short and I’m not one to make my night longer than necessary.

Looks like one of my GestaltIT Tech Field Day brothers has made my next late night date with HP server migrations a little easier. Simon Seagrave’s post VMware P2V – Easy Method to Remove HP Agents and Utilities is about the HP Proliant Support Pack Cleaner v1.1 utility available from ctxadmtools.musumeci.com.ar – a site self described as full of “FREE Tools for Citrix, Microsoft and VMware Administrators and Consultants.”

I haven’t tried this utility myself yet, there doesn’t appear to be any documentation for it, and Seagrave doesn’t mention how/when he uses the utility, so I’ll have to figure out later if my process of disabling all the HP services works with this Support Pack Cleaner. I imagine it’ll work fine. I’ll just run it after I boot the migrated VM for the first time.

Sorry Windows Control Panel and Add/Remove Programs, we’ve spent a lot of time together over the years but it’s time for me to move on. Thanks Simon!

Seagrave has also previously posted about a script to do the same job. Check out both of his posts!

At the VMworld 2009 Vizioncore booth I discovered 3 new free tools from Vizioncore that all VI administrators, no matter which popular hypervisor platform you use, should know about. vConverter SC, vControl Multi-Hypervisor Management, and vOptimizer WasteFinder offer unique features that accomplish and automate common virtual environment administrative tasks. These products include tools for P2V and V2V migrations between multiple vendor platforms, a web based multi hypervisor management server, and virtual disk optimization through VMDK alignment and wasted storage scanning.

Vizioncore is banking on creating wider interest and adoption of its full product suite in the virtualization market, but for now administrators definitely come out the winners with these great tools at no cost. The free products mentioned in this post (as well as all of Vizioncore’s software) can be downloaded here.

I’ve summarized these utilities in the rest of this post. Read the rest of this entry »

Virtualization can be credited for popularizing the phrase “low hanging fruit” as a referral to the set of physical servers so underutilized they are easy virtualization candidates. Now, as virtual infrastructures (VI) mature and larger, more resource intensive applications are being considered for physical to virtual (p2V) migrations, administrators and application owners need to figure out how to adapt existing VI designs to accommodate the “fruit” still left in the “tree canopy”.

Anyone who has already “harvested” their own “low hanging fruit” knows there is so much to consider. The p2v tool and process are the tip of the iceberg, change control is just below the surface, and there are many more technical challenges hidden in the depths. I’ve blogged in the past about treating the migration to VI the same as you would changing physical data centers. It’s not just server builds and operating system installs.

These same challenges experienced during the initial consolidation are still there for the rest of the bunch, but most likely on a much more public and political scale. In fact, since more times than not these same servers were left out of the first consolidation scenario as “bad virtualization candidates, it’s likely time to Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

VMware has released Update 4 of the VirtualCenter Management Server (also now known as vCenter). The latest Release Notes detail a couple new features, several Plug-In updates, and numerous resolved issues. The current build of ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 3 has not changed as of this post.

The following cut and pastes were taken while skimming through the release notes and highlight the changes that caught my attention.

What’s New

• Guest Operating System Customization Improvements – VirtualCenter now supports customization of Windows Server 2008 guest operating systems.
• Performance Overview Charts – VirtualCenter 2.5 Update 4 introduces the Performance Overview plug-in, which provides a single view of key performance metrics for CPU, memory, disk, and network without having to navigate through multiple charts. The aggregated charts show high-level summaries of resource distribution.

Plug-Ins Updates

This release of the VMware Infrastructure 3 software suite also includes the following:

• An update to VMware Converter Enterprise. For more information, see the VMware Converter Enterprise Update 4 for VirtualCenter 2.5 Release Notes.
• An update to VMware Update Manager. For more information, see the VMware Update Manager 1.0 Update 4 for VirtualCenter 2.5 Release Notes.
• The Performance Overview plug-in.

Two builds of VMware Infrastructure Management Installer are available for download.

• VMware-VIMSetup-2.5.0-U4-English.iso or VMware-VIMSetup-2.5.0-U4-English.zip – These files include an English-only version of the VI Client, which runs in English regardless of the language of the Windows system. Use this installer to install a VI Client that will run in English on Chinese, German or Japanese versions of the Windows operating system.
• VMware-VIMSetup-2.5.0-U4-localized.iso or VMware-VIMSetup-2.5.0-U4-localized.zip – These files include a localized installer that installs all files needed to run in English, Chinese, German, or Japanese. The VI Client used at runtime will correspond to the locale of the current Windows operating system if the locale is Chinese, German or Japanese. On Windows operating systems set to locales other than Chinese, German, or Japanese, the English version of the VI Client will be used.

I am assuming it is also recommended that you upgrade all instances of the Read the rest of this entry »

VMware has just released the latest version of it’s free, stand alone physical to virtual (P2V) migration tool, vCenter Converter 4. I’ve been using this version for customer P2V migrations since it was publicly available as a Beta, and I have been extremely impressed. With several features not available in any previous release (including the Enterprise version included as a plugin of vCenter 2.5), I strongly recommend VI admins download a copy of vCenter Converter 4 Standalone.

Check out the new features listed in the Release Notes:

The VMware vCenter Converter Standalone release adds several new features including:

• Physical to virtual machine conversion support for Linux (RHEL, SUSE and Ubuntu) as source
• Physical to virtual machine conversion support for Windows Server 2008 as source
• Hot cloning improvements to clone any incremental changes to physical machine during the P2V conversion process
• Support for converting new third-party image formats including Parallels Desktop virtual machines, newer versions of Symantec, Acronis, and StorageCraft
• Workflow automation enhancements to include automatic source shutdown, automatic start-up of the destination virtual machine as well as shutting down one or more services at the source and starting up selected services at the destination
• Target disk selection and the ability to specify how the volumes are laid out in the new destination virtual machine
• Destination virtual machine configuration, including CPU, memory, and disk controller type

Let em re-emphasize some of the features that I find to be “game changers” for a free P2V migration product. Read the rest of this entry »

Most physical to virtual migrations (P2V) of servers end up as virtual machines with the partitions encapsulated in virtual disk (.vmdk or .vhd) files. But what if the physical server already has a partition that’s configured through an iSCSI connection to the SAN, and what if that’s the same SAN that the new VM will run on? Of course, the new VM will have to be on a different LUN (formatted for use by the virtualization host), but should you encapsulate the current NTFS iSCSI partition or should you maintain the iSCSI initiator within the resulting VM? The former option depends on how much available SAN space you have to work with, the latter requires some extra thinking before you begin.

When you decide to maintain a server’s existing iSCSI partitions as a VM, there are several configuration considerations to plan for.
Read the rest of this entry »