Real machine > VMware

Hi guys

I have a server here, I would like to put it on a VMware virtual machine instead. Is this possible? Can you use something like ghost the achieve this?
I would appreciate your thoughts.

Thanks

Z

Will this do what you want? http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

I've done this a few times on W2003. Worked every time except once - where AD was corrupt on restore of the ghost image - but this turned out to be a problem before the image was taken.

Also - all but one worked straight away. One needed a repair of Windows but worked after that.

So you made a ghost image and restored it on a VM?

Thanks for the link Jona.

Z

No, VMWare converter looks at the server and creates a modified image. Nothing at all to do with Ghost.

I've used it a few times and never once had a problem. If you're consolidating your hardware, have you looked at VMWare ESX server or XenServer?

I've been reading up on this with a view to converting my current base image machine (a Dell Latitude D505 laptop) to a VMWare Virtual Machine.

I currently use the laptop for altering the generic base image, ghosting (to maintain a clean pre-sysprepped image) then syspreping before capturing with WDS ready for deployment.

I want to move to a Virtual Machine so that I can move even further from hardware dependence and enable a faster capture process (using snapshots to remove the pre-sysprep ghost image stage).

Am I going to run into problems down the line trying to convert my existing physical machine to a virtual one and then using it for capture/deployment? Would I be better off rebuilding from scratch using VMWare? (I'd rather not have to do that!)

Thanks, Dave.

I've used VMWare Convertor on a few of servers and it's done a pretty good job. We have had a couple of issue though. On one machine it'd always crash out at 5%, and on another it had problems with seeing all the harddrive and getting the drive letters in the right order. In the first cast we ghosted the entire server and restored the image to a VM. In the second we used VMWare Convertor on the C drive and ghosted the rest.

I must say, ghost is a lot quicker than VMWare Convertor!

Dave, If your physical machine is as clean as you say, you should have no probs at all with VMWare Convertor.

ive used coverter a few times..
its not perfect i think it gets upset depending on how busy the machine is
give it a whirl and see what happens it dosnt destroy the original box