Create a copy of entire server on a VM

tjim

Hi,

I am a bit new to Virtual Machines and I wanted to try it on an upcoming project our company have.

We have a server with vSphere Hypervisor from VmWare and I have prepared it with three vm:s of appropriate sizes. I would like to get copies of our three live servers on these vm:s.

I remember my Linux teacher telling me this could be done in school once, but I can't find how.

Do any of you know how to do this?

The main thing is that the live servers must not be affected in any way.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

mfillpot

If the physical servers are using non-custom kernels you should be able to use a disk cloning application or dd to clone the entire hard drives to images which you can then clone into your vmware virtual disk using the same tool from a livecd. I also recommend checking the vsphere documentation, I think that they should have a tool included that complete the same taks.

ben

there's a VMWare Physical to Virtual converter, it was called vmconverter, now the updated name is VMWare vCenter Converter

Ben

peter79

tjim wrote:

Hi,

I am a bit new to Virtual Machines and I wanted to try it on an upcoming project our company have.

We have a server with vSphere Hypervisor from VmWare and I have prepared it with three vm:s of appropriate sizes. I would like to get copies of our three live servers on these vm:s.

I remember my Linux teacher telling me this could be done in school once, but I can't find how.

Do any of you know how to do this?

The main thing is that the live servers must not be affected in any way.

Any help is greatly appreciated.

Just so I'm clear you want to convert 3 physical servers to virtual servers? Your 2 options are as follows.

1. vCenter converter plugin. Should be available on the vCenter installer package.

2. Go to VMware website and download the stand alone vCenter converter.

They both do the same job but the stand alone converter tends to have less issues.