VM /ETC

Archive for the ‘P2V’ Category

A large percentage of VMware administrators have already used VMware Converter to conduct physical to virtual (p2v) migrations of their physical servers. For some reason though, VMware Converter always seems to be overlooked as a tool to accomplish virtual to virtual (v2v) conversions to an ESX target. Not only can you accomplish v2v migrations, but you can use VMware Converter to cross multiple vendor or incompatible virtualization host platforms.

For example, any of the following virtualization products running a Windows VM can be v2v -ed to an ESX host  with VMware Converter:

• ESX 2.x
• ESX 3.x / ESXi 3.x
• Virtual Server 1.x or 2.x
• Hyper-V
• XenServer
• any of the hosted desktop products including (but not limited to) VMware Workstation and Fusion, Microsoft Virtual PC, and Sun xVM VirtualBox.

How and why is this possible? Read the rest of this entry »

Since P2V conversions with VMware Converter have been on my mind (and my schedule!) the last few months I figured I’d go ahead and discuss the best practices for troubleshooting failed P2V migrations of Windows physical machines to VMware virtual infrastructure. This post copies VMware KB article Best Practices using VMware Converter but with my own experience and opinions thrown in here and there.

I want all readers to understand that all of the recommendations listed are not always necessary, but instead should be systematically tried as needed when experiencing troubles. Most P2V migrations with VMware Converter “just work” without any issues. Use these steps to troubleshoot that small percentage of conversions that fail without an obvious explanation. Read the rest of this entry »

VMware Communities: VMware Converter 4.0 Standalone Public … is the link to the VMware Communities web page with information for signing up for the VMware Converter 4.0 public beta. I first heard about this from Eric Sloof’s NTPRO.NL blog last week, but I’ve actually downloaded the stand alone beta version and will be experimenting with it this week. From the Communities page, here are the instructions for signing up.

~~ Getting Started ~~
If you already have a VMware store account, please follow the link below to
gain access to Converter 4.0 beta software, documentation and join the
Converter 4.0 beta community.

http://www.vmware.com/publicbeta/conv4-beta

If you don’t have a VMware store account, please follow the link below to create
a VMware store account, gain access to Converter 4.0 beta software,
documentation and join Converter 4.0 beta community.

http://www.vmware.com/publicbetanew/conv4-beta

These links have been randomly available. In fact, when I tried last week i was unable to access these pages, but today I was able to get through and download the users guide, release notes, and both the Windows and Linux versions of converter.

The Release Notes describe some exciting nw features. Read the rest of this entry »

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. Read the rest of this entry »

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.”

Read the rest of this entry »

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
Read the rest of this entry »

Carlo Costanzo over at ipmer.com has a great post about how to quickly and easily solve issues resulting from VM snapshots. As Carlo points out, too many administrators misunderstand the ESX snapshot to be a point in time backup and unfortunately do not realize it is instead a live and growing file. More often than not the snapshot is forgotten until the LUN is completely out of space at which time the VM is unstable. Trying to commit the snapshot becomes a time consuming burden.

The post 70GB Snapshot, YIKES! explains how Carlo used some “outside of the box” thinking to use VMware Converter to rescue VMs without going through the commit process. The idea is so simple it’s brilliant! Carlo writes:

Read the rest of this entry »