Tonight I did a bigger P2V (physical 2 virtual) migration. I virtualized an older Windows Server 2003 SP1 with MS SQL Server 2005 and WSS 3.0. This can be used as a step by step how-to guide.
- First I created a Image of the old server with Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010, this could be done online. I just stopped all the Sharepoint, SQL and Web Services so that no new data could be written in the time I created this Image.
- After I moved this Image to the Microsoft Hyper-V Host Server, I started to convert the v2i Image with Symantec Backup Exec System Recovery 2010 to a Microsoft VHD.
- I created a new Virtual Machine on the Hyper-V Server and added this existing VHD. (Important here: I tried to create the same Hardware environment for the VM which I had as physical Hardware before. (Dual Core with 2048MB memory) So I had basically no problem to start the Virtual Machine.
- Now its time to install the Hyper-v integration components (the VM Drivers) which can only be installed on Windows Server 2003 with SP2 or later. I turned off the Virtual Machine again and attached the VHD File offline on my Hyper-v Server, so I had file access to the Virtual Hard Disk. I simply added the Servicepack 2 file to the root of the VHD.
- After unmounting the VHD, I started my Virtual Machine again and installed the Servicepack 2 and the Hyper-v Integration components.
- Now I added more Hardware to the Virtual Machine (Quad-Core and 4GB memory). I also change the Legacy Network Adapters to normal Network Adapters (higher Network performance)
The performance of the new Hyper-v is just pretty impressive.
Hello Thomas
just been looking at one of your slightly older blogs, Is there any reason you didnt use the inbuilt Hyper-V p2v wizard to virtualise the SQL server?
Im looking at creating a MOSS test envionment on 2008r2, virtualising a physical Windows 2008 box/ sql server 2005.
thanks
Phil
Hello Thomas
just been looking at one of your slightly older blogs, Is there any reason you didnt use the inbuilt Hyper-V p2v wizard to virtualise the SQL server?
Im looking at creating a MOSS test envionment on 2008r2, virtualising a physical Windows 2008 box/ sql server 2005.
thanks
Phil
Hi Phil
The only reason why I did use the hyper-v p2v wizard, I had no SCVMM running at this time. And the physical server was a very old machine, so I gave Symantec System Recovery a try, which turned out to be a good choice.
I think you gonna have no problems to p2v migration your windows 2008 environment with SCVMM.
Hi Phil
The only reason why I did use the hyper-v p2v wizard, I had no SCVMM running at this time. And the physical server was a very old machine, so I gave Symantec System Recovery a try, which turned out to be a good choice.
I think you gonna have no problems to p2v migration your windows 2008 environment with SCVMM.
Are there any other suitable solutions (Symantec is also expensive). I was planning to make a backup to an external drive with WBADMIN and perform bare metal restore at Virtual server… We’ve got single Small Business 2008, with plenty of services – PBX Asterisk, Website, Sharepoint, Exhcange, AD+DNS+DHCP. PBX and website are running under Virtual Server 2005. This thing can not even perform a backup! I want to move PBX and website to Hyper-V server 2008 and then move the main server itself…