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Archive for the ‘vmware converter’ Category

I happened to find the Paragon Go Virtual free P2V migration tool when trying to find a disk image back up tool for my notebook. This free tool is designed for desktops only and only works with the following OSes:

• Windows 7 (32/64-bit)
• Windows Vista (32/64-bit)
• Windows XP (32/64-bit)
• Windows 2000 Professional

Here are some self described key features per the web site:

“Full Windows OS Support - Guaranteed support for any Windows operating system since Win2K (excluding server editions).

P2V Migration - Migrate a physical system to a virtual environment by converting all installed software and data into a virtual disk of the required virtual machine.

Migration without rebooting Windows - Hot processing of locked (in-use) hard disks lets you migrate a computer without rebooting and interrupting Windows.

P2V Adjust OS to recover the startup ability after unsuccessful virtualization with a 3rd party tool and to make Windows Vista/7 backups bootable on virtual hardware.

Smart Driver Injector - Makes the process of adding new drivers smooth and easy.

Performance – Paragon Go Virtual performs approximately 20% faster (your results may vary).

P2V adjust OS – Freeware tools will not adjust the OS to virtual hardware, leaving the user unable to boot their virtual machine. Go Virtual adjusts the OS so the virtual machine will boot successfully.

Selection of virtual hardware – Go Virtual offers the user a selection of virtual hardware types. Freeware tools typically do not.

Migration of offline systems - Freeware tools support the migration of operating systems currently running, but they have problems migrating offline operating systems, especially when there are more than one OS on the disk. Go Virtual performs these operations with ease.”

Also per the Paragon web site:

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 »

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 »