{"id":81,"date":"2010-06-01T14:18:34","date_gmt":"2010-06-01T18:18:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/enterpriseadmins.org\/blog\/?p=81"},"modified":"2010-06-01T14:18:34","modified_gmt":"2010-06-01T18:18:34","slug":"linux-p2v-with-vmware-converter-stand-alone","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/enterpriseadmins.org\/blog\/virtualization\/linux-p2v-with-vmware-converter-stand-alone\/","title":{"rendered":"Linux P2V with VMware Converter Stand Alone"},"content":{"rendered":"

Over the years I have seen thousands of Windows Servers and completed hundreds of Windows P2Vs.\u00a0 I only have dozens of Linux Servers and have yet to attempt a Linux P2V \u2013 until now!<\/p>\n

To beign I found an older model physical server.\u00a0 This physical server had a Dell PERC RAID controller with two RAID-1 volumes.\u00a0 I installed RedHat Enterprise 4.5 using only the first RAID-1 set and accepting the default partitioning options.\u00a0 Once the install was complete I added the second drive as the \/data mount.\u00a0 This wasn\u2019t necessary; I just wanted to verify that additional disks would be available for cloning.<\/p>\n

mkfs.ext3 \/dev\/sdb2\r\nmkdir \/data\r\nmount \/dev\/sdb2 \/data\r\nvi \/etc\/fstab<\/pre>\n
Once the fstab was open in VI, I added the following line at the end of file:<\/p>\n
\/dev\/sdb2\u00a0 \/data\u00a0 ext3\u00a0 defaults\u00a0 1 2<\/pre>\n
Instructions for adding this second disk as the \/data mount were obtained here: <\/em>http:\/\/www.cyberciti.biz\/faq\/linux-disk-format\/<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n
This actual P2V process was completed using the free VMware Converter Standalone.<\/p>\n
    \n
  1. Specify the machine source.\u00a0 I\u2019ve allowed root login over SSH, which isn\u2019t a best security practice, but was requested by the converter utility.\u00a0 Supported Linux distributions are listed on the first screen but include:\n
      \n
    1. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1, 3.0, 4.0, 5.0<\/li>\n
    2. Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 2.1<\/li>\n
    3. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8, 9, 10<\/li>\n
    4. Ubuntu Linux 5.x, 6.x, 7.x, 8.x<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<\/li>\n
    5. Specify the vCenter or ESX\/ESXi host name, user name and password.<\/li>\n
    6. Select a host (if needed), enter information about the VM name, datastore, and hardware version.<\/li>\n
    7. A \u201cView\/Edit Options\u201d screen appears that allows you to reconfigure the virtual hardware.\u00a0 In my \u2018data to copy\u2019 heading I see all of my volumes with their current size \u2013 and am provided the ability to shrink\/grow them as needed.\u00a0 I have also removed CPU\/Memory to \u2018right-size\u2019 the VM configuration.<\/li>\n
    8. The final option on the \u201cView\/Edit Options\u201d page asks for the \u201cHelper VM Network\u201d information.\u00a0 My first attempt to complete this P2V failed because of an invalid configuration on this step.\u00a0 My test network did not have DHCP available — it turns out that the converter process boots the target VM from an ISO image to assist in the process.\u00a0 This last step is where the temporary IP information is assigned to the target virtual machine for the cloning process.<\/li>\n
    9. Here is a screenshot of the \u2018helper\u2019 VM while the cloning operation is going on:
      \n      \"\"<\/a><\/li>\n
    10. The successful log below gives a better summary of what actually happens:
      \n      \"\"<\/a><\/li>\n
    11. Once the virtual machine is powered on, a wizard starts to help you with the hardware changes. \u00a0In my build I had to press a key to begin and the first screen I saw was really straight forward:
      \n      \"\"<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
      Over the years I have seen thousands of Windows Servers and completed hundreds of Windows P2Vs.\u00a0 I only have dozens of Linux Servers and have yet to attempt a Linux P2V \u2013 until now! To beign I found an older … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-virtualization"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/enterpriseadmins.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/enterpriseadmins.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/enterpriseadmins.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enterpriseadmins.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enterpriseadmins.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/enterpriseadmins.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":90,"href":"https:\/\/enterpriseadmins.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81\/revisions\/90"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/enterpriseadmins.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enterpriseadmins.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enterpriseadmins.org\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}