Solved How would you migrate from VMWare to HyperV?
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I have a client with a pair of 5 year old Dell servers. They have VMWare 5.0 installed with no license. The current backup situation is Windows server backup of the Guest OS (SBS2008 and Server 2008) to some USB drives that are connected.
It all works as is, but We are looking to move them to Server 2012 R2 in the near future.
I personally prefer Hyper-V though so when we prepare for Server 2012, I would like to move the current stuff to Hyper-V.
Right now each Host is only running 1 VM. SBS2008 on one host and Server 2008 (with SQL) on the other. I have the capacity to run them all from one box with no problems, so I was thinking to migrate one and then wipe one box and set it up with Hyper-V.
Once I get to that point, what would be the best method to convert?
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As a side note, they do not want new servers now, as I have recommended against it. Getting some new drives and then more memory will let these run for a few more years no problem.
This lets them stagger their costs. OS this year. Hardware in 2-3 years. Also, I firmly believe that there is no reason to replace working hardware in a VM environment like this until it fails. They have the capacity to run it all on one box, so no need to replace hardware yet.
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You might be able to do a Windows Backup from within the VM and then take that backup to a generic install already loaded on the new Hyper-V host. Would take a little bit but may work.
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@Bill-Kindle said:
You might be able to do a Windows Backup from within the VM and then take that backup to a generic install already loaded on the new Hyper-V host. Would take a little bit but may work.
Actually, I know from experience elsewhere that I can do that with no issues.
The Windows Server 2008 (and SBS) install process has an advanced option to restore from backup. During said process there is another advanced option to specify that you are restoring to different hardware.
When you boot the first time after install looks for new hardware instead of attempting to load the original.
I have done that before years ago to go from Physical to Virtual when I had to use the same hardware.
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P2V tools would be ideal, far better than a traditional backup -> restore operation.
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in this case a V2V tool.
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@scottalanmiller said:
P2V tools would be ideal, far better than a traditional backup -> restore operation.
Which tools, etc, are things I am inquiring about. I know some methods. I have checked into others. But I would assume that the user base here can give me hard examples.
I have never had a client in the position to migrate V2V at this point. P2V I have done before.
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@Dashrender said:
in this case a V2V tool.
Those generally don't exist. You actually use P2V to do an "any to virtual" migration.
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@JaredBusch said:
@scottalanmiller said:
P2V tools would be ideal, far better than a traditional backup -> restore operation.
Which tools, etc, are things I am inquiring about. I know some methods. I have checked into others. But I would assume that the user base here can give me hard examples.
I have never had a client in the position to migrate V2V at this point. P2V I have done before.
Not sure what P2V supports HyperV.
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Some tools like Unitrends will do a backup and restore to disparate "hardware" which should work for moving between environments.
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I've don the conversion a couple of times ... from VMWare to Hyper-V... I recommend Starwind. They have a free V2V converter tool that will allow you to switch the file formats. It works wonders... just set your email up when you register to go to a throw-away account...
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@milnesy said:
I've don the conversion a couple of times ... from VMWare to Hyper-V... I recommend Starwind. They have a free V2V converter tool that will allow you to switch the file formats. It works wonders... just set your email up when you register to go to a throw-away account...
Awesome, I had no idea that they had that.
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I've not tried this in a VM, but maybe?
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx -
@NetworkNerd the p2v for this is nice... just remember to check off a box if you're looking to use hyper-v on 2012... The downside though is that you might get a bloated VM because you can't move some of the blocks from the end of the vm to the front. Had that happen to me on one drive that was a 160gb vm using only 40gb. used the tool and was left with a 120gb vm... turned out that there were 'unmovable files' at the end of the vm image...
