[PVE-User] P2V Windows2003 Server (AD)

[Adam Thompson]

My usual approach nowadays is - assuming either downtime can be tolerated or it's a DC (in which case you *must* endure the downtime) :
- prepare a new blank VM using IDE disks only, that otherwise matches the physical hardware as closely as possible (# of disks, etc.)
- install the IDE registry patch on the Windows server
- install all the VirtIO drivers if possible on the Windows server
- preinstall the QEMU Agent (Spice Agent) on the Windows server
- boot the VM using sysresccd
- boot the Physical server using sysresccd
- do something along the lines of:

  nc -l 12345 | gunzip | pv -pterabW > /dev/sda		# on the VM
  pv -pterabW /dev/sda | gzip -1 | nc 8.8.8.8 12345	# on the physical server
 
# you could probably substitute "dd if=/dev/sda bs=512 status=progress" for the "pv" command if you prefer.
# If you're doing this over 100Mbps, definitely keep a compression program in-line.  If you're doing this over gigabit, it depends on how fast your CPUs are - no compression might be faster.  At 10ge, skip the compression step altogether.

- repeat, serially, for each physical (& virtual) disk.
- poweroff the physical server
- boot the VM

...done.

Basically, I'm taking extra time and extra disk space to just do a straight byte-wise copy of the windows server disks.  This makes the process slow but nearly bulletproof.  Once the P2V has succeeded, then  you can use PVE's "Move Disk" to move it to a QCOW2 file and re-sparsify the disk.
-Adam


> -----Original Message-----
> From: pve-user [mailto:pve-user-bounces at pve.proxmox.com] On
> Behalf Of HK 590 Dicky ??? ??
> Sent: October 7, 2016 04:44
> To: pve-user at pve.proxmox.com
> Subject: [PVE-User] P2V Windows2003 Server (AD)
> 
> Hi,
> 
> anyone here have experience on migrate physical windows 2003 server
> to proxmox?
> i used a tools to  "EaseUS Todo Backup Advanced Server " to covert
> physical server to .vmdk than a create new VM with vmdk format, and
> replace the windows 2003 server .vmdk file just created, but can't start
> up successful, i can see the Windows 2003 logo 2 seconds, than keep
> reboot..
> 
> any suggestion to migrate physical windows 2003 server to Proxmox ?
> 
> thanks a lot.
> 
> Dicky
> 
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