VMWare ESXi - convert physical win2k3 server : Tips?

[contink]

After wasting literally 2 nights on this (and still being up at stupid o'clock) I wanted to ask if anyone has a cast iron, bullet proof guide to converting a physical Win2k3 (32bit) machine to a VMWare virtual one using the VMWare vCenter Converter Standalone utility.

 

I've had every conceivable problem from the System partition existing on a disk other than the first one, to the dreaded "A disk read error occurred" which I suspect was related to running the server in normal mode.

 

 

Anyway, if any of you more experienced types could suggest any tips or a guide on how to do this I'd appreciate it.

 

 

My latest guide is as follows:

- disable non-essential disks in BIOS to get primary system disk to postion disk0

- run chkdsk foo: /f on all partitions intended to convert across

- reboot into AD rescue mode

- run the conversion process

 

My preceding attempts go as far as the first step and a successful conversion until I tried booting up the VM and got that error above..

 

 

Any help gratefully received...

[glennda]

After wasting literally 2 nights on this (and still being up at stupid o'clock) I wanted to ask if anyone has a cast iron, bullet proof guide to converting a physical Win2k3 (32bit) machine to a VMWare virtual one using the VMWare vCenter Converter Standalone utility.

 

I've had every conceivable problem from the System partition existing on a disk other than the first one, to the dreaded "A disk read error occurred" which I suspect was related to running the server in normal mode.

 

 

Anyway, if any of you more experienced types could suggest any tips or a guide on how to do this I'd appreciate it.

 

 

My latest guide is as follows:

- disable non-essential disks in BIOS to get primary system disk to postion disk0

- run chkdsk foo: /f on all partitions intended to convert across

- reboot into AD rescue mode

- run the conversion process

 

My preceding attempts go as far as the first step and a successful conversion until I tried booting up the VM and got that error above..

 

 

Any help gratefully received...

 

 

If its just a DC, my suggestion would be just create a fresh vm, then promote the machine, and demote the otherone,or if its a file server or exchange, if you have good backups, create a fresh vm, then restore from backup. i would only use the converter if it is something like sims.

 

just my opinion tho

[Jon88]

In light of the recent problems We have had here I would strongly recomend building fresh VM's and transfering data across, if you are building 2k3 machines we have found VM ware defaults to a Buslogic SCSI driver but 2k3 seems to run much better on LSI Logic (have found a fair few arguments for this on the web)

[contink]

I guess this makes something of a mockery of the whole idea of the converter actually working but nothing is ever easy so I shouldn't be surprised..

 

I think I'll have to go with the plan E (I've gone through a few already) and migrate the whole lot to Server 2008 R2 as I was headed in that direction anyway. Now trying to think how best to migrate the fileserver and all those shares...

[glennda]

I guess this makes something of a mockery of the whole idea of the converter actually working but nothing is ever easy so I shouldn't be surprised.. .

 

Thats Computers!

 

I think I'll have to go with the plan E (I've gone through a few already) and migrate the whole lot to Server 2008 R2 as I was headed in that direction anyway. Now trying to think how best to migrate the fileserver and all those shares..

 

either use something like robocopy, or backup/restore the data on the drives thats how i have done it before. depending on how its shared, if its just the main folder to setup the shares on the manually isn't acutally that bad, just aslong as permissions are set up right so that ad can set up the permissions for you.

[Domino]

The cold clone boot cd is much more reliable than the converter - no danger of data loss whatsoever.

 

The disk read error could well be to do with drivers, you could try installing the vmware tools before rebuilding - or running a repair install with the vmware floppy mounted and hitting f6 when it asks for other drivers.

[teejay]

Most of the time the convertor does a really good job, converted 14 servers over summer with 13 going across spot on first time and 1 that was a pain in the backside:rolleyes:

I ended up using the Xen convertor utility, which when tested had failed on every other machine I'd tried but worked on the one that didn't:confused:. It will only do one drive at a time though.

 

For copying the file shares, use either Robocopy or set the shares up in DFS and add the new servers as a target and let it synch across and then remove the original location as a target.

 

The other option is if you are using a unified storage box as storage for the VM's is to set up the shares directly on that. We've done that with our Sun storage and it works far better than running the shares in Windows.

[contink]

The cold clone boot cd is much more reliable than the converter - no danger of data loss whatsoever.

Seems that's an enterprise product that I can't access but useful to know it's there for future ref.

 

The disk read error could well be to do with drivers, you could try installing the vmware tools before rebuilding - or running a repair install with the vmware floppy mounted and hitting f6 when it asks for other drivers.

That would be my guess... As usual though the vmware site is a bit "sparse" when it comes to showing you where or what the vmware floppy actually is or what to do with it. Any tips?

[2097]

I converted a Acronis Image to a VMware machine , worked fine..

 

Maybe use an Acronis Bootcd to create a image then use the VMware conversion software maybe ?

[Domino]

Seems that's an enterprise product that I can't access but useful to know it's there for future ref.

 

 

That would be my guess... As usual though the vmware site is a bit "sparse" when it comes to showing you where or what the vmware floppy actually is or what to do with it. Any tips?

 

Do you not have a vmimages folder in your datstores when mounting a floppy/cd drive to the vm? it should be in there

[plexer]

What about BMR to a new vmware machine from your backup system? or even a standard install and then use your backup system to load from there?

 

Ben

[tmcd35]

I've had problems with VMWare Convertor in the past (last version I used was 1.04 (I think) though).

 

I ended up ghosting the physical images and bringing them down on the VM's. Then use a Windows repair install tog et it working. That method worked everytime.

[RobFuller]

VMware do an offline boot CD converter, use this and it can push the machine straight into any ESX setup you have or save them locally/network share.

 

I've done Exchange, Linux, DC's all by this method flawlessly.

[Theblacksheep]

Just for sanity check.....

 

Source firewall off?

Source AV disabled?

Shadow copy, workstation, server tcpipnetbios services working?

400mb free disk space on source system drive?

Unnessesary source services shutdown?

Unnessesary source hardware removed?

Source disks no bigger than 256gb each? (VMFS block size limit)

DNS ok between source and destination?

139,443,445,902 on open on acls/destination?

Edited December 10, 2009 by Theblacksheep

[contink]

Do you not have a vmimages folder in your datstores when mounting a floppy/cd drive to the vm? it should be in there

 

No such folder on any of the disks... I'm using a ESXi from a bootable USB stick which might explain why...

[contink]

Just for sanity check.....

Sanity is good...

 

Source firewall off?

YES

 

Source AV disabled?

YES

 

Shadow copy, workstation, server tcpipnetbios services working?

YES

 

400mb free disk space on source system drive?

YES

 

Unnessesary source services shutdown?

This is where I get stuck... Which services are necessary and which are not?

 

Unnessesary source hardware removed?

YES

 

Source disks no bigger than 256gb each? (VMFS block size limit)

YES.. or at least the ones I'm copying across are.

 

DNS ok between source and destination?

Not 100% about this as the DNS is on the Server being copied. Also not sure why this is relevant to my disk reading problem.

 

139,443,445,902 on open on acls/destination?

Again, not sure why this is relevant.

 

 

Appreciate the help but I have no idea on some of the stuff why it would affect the conversion.

[contink]

Just a small note for those of you who find yourself in the same situation...

 

Uploading a file like an FLP (floppy image file) to the datastore on your ESXi system is trotted out as a step without anyone actually providing any information on how you do this in ESXi 4 using vSphere...

 

After literally an hour and a half of trying to find this information I finally located something that didn't hark back to ESXi3.5 and something called a vi client...

 

 

In ESXi 4 using vsphere Client you do the following:

• click on configurations
  
• click on storage.
   
  
• Right click on your data store that is listed and select browse.
  
• From here, you can upload your files
  

Ref: uploading .iso file to ESXi : VMWare ESXi 4.0 Vsphere (last post)

 

 

It's basic crap like this that drives me completely out of my mind when it comes to VMWare and the like... They don't just alter the GUI slightly, they go out of their way to make it f***ing impossible to locate and use.

[Theblacksheep]

Source disks no bigger than 256gb each? (VMFS block size limit)

YES.. or at least the ones I'm copying across are.

 

DNS ok between source and destination?

Not 100% about this as the DNS is on the Server being copied. Also not sure why this is relevant to my disk reading problem.

 

139,443,445,902 on open on acls/destination?

Again, not sure why this is relevant.

 

Appreciate the help but I have no idea on some of the stuff why it would affect the conversion.

 

It relies on DNS to convert, so you'll need another DNS server running for the whole conversion. Dont know about your disk problem directly, but I was just giving some things to check to eliminating possibilities.

 

The source and destination communicates over those ports.

 

What errors are you getting?

 

Had a look through the KB?

 

VMware KB - Search Results

[contink]

It relies on DNS to convert, so you'll need another DNS server running for the whole conversion. Dont know about your disk problem directly, but I was just giving some things to check to eliminating possibilities.

 

The source and destination communicates over those ports.

Ok... that makes a bit more sense and I appreciate the explanation... I wasn't aware that was the case.

 

As far as the DNS goes it's hot converting so DNS should have been working throughout..

 

What errors are you getting?

The conversion process doesn't kick out any errors exactly but when you try to boot up it comes up with a "disk read error".

 

I can successfully boot using a Win2k3 CD and run a repair, do the usual FIXMBR FIXBOOT but when I reboot it just hits the same issue...

 

Had a look through the KB?

 

VMware KB - Search Results

Yeah... it pulls out things like AHCI, etc... but to be honest I've pretty much given up and started a manual transfer process.

 

Where I may be going wrong is that I'm not transferring every disk or partition because some are simply backup disks, etc... There's also a Highpoint RAID volume on the server although that's not being copied at all...

[DMcCoy]

The conversion process doesn't kick out any errors exactly but when you try to boot up it comes up with a "disk read error".

 

I can successfully boot using a Win2k3 CD and run a repair, do the usual FIXMBR FIXBOOT but when I reboot it just hits the same issue...

 

Does the physical server have multiple disk controllers, or hidden recovery/utility partitions?

[contink]

Does the physical server have multiple disk controllers, or hidden recovery/utility partitions?

 

No recovery/utility partitions but it does have a RAID controller along with a standard nVidia nForce4 SATA and PATA controllers.

[contink]

Just to note that I gave up in the end and just went with the option of transfering roles across.

 

Unfortunately I made the mistake of transferring them to a 2k8 R2 server without really thinking it through so I'm now experiencing other issues...

 

A couple of things to note in case anyone else finds this.

 

1. You need to update your ESXi to 4.xU1 to get better support for Server 2008 R2

 

2. The update is easy to handle through the "vSphere Host Update Utility 4.0"

2a. It will look like the process has hung but it does get there eventually... (have to love the 45% done stuck for the whole thing... stupid!)

 

3. Remember to upgrade the VMware tools

 

 

 

 

Also worth noting that you should never do this stuff at O'dark thirty or you might input a duplicate IP address into a server's IP settings instead of under the DNS tab... Only taken me 5 hours to debug that one.

 

:doh:

What a completely dip!