VM back to Physical Machine

[MrBaker89]

Firstly, sorry if this is the wrong area. 

 

I'm looking at converting a users machine to virtual. 

 

Before I do this, is there a way to convert and restore back to a physical machine if required? 

 

TIA.

[igormp]

Are you planning on just using their boot disk entirely for the VM, or moving it into a virtual file? If the former, it's dead easy and you won't have to do anything. If the latter, then you'd need to write the data back to a raw disk in order to allow a PC to boot it.

[MrBaker89]

7 minutes ago, igormp said:

Are you planning on just using their boot disk entirely for the VM, or moving it into a virtual file? If the former, it's dead easy and you won't have to do anything. If the latter, then you'd need to write the data back to a raw disk in order to allow a PC to boot it.

 

Converting the whole disk to VHDX to host as a machine on our Esxi client. 

[Agall]

11 minutes ago, MrBaker89 said:

 

Converting the whole disk to VHDX to host as a machine on our Esxi client. 

V2V Converter / P2V Converter - Converting VM Formats (starwindsoftware.com)

 

I've used this tool now dozens of times to convert desktops and servers to .vhdx. The first party Microsoft tool that used to let you do this is dead, and this was the most official one I could find. Doesn't try anything stupid either with pointing to WAN or such, so I would consider it safe.

 

Converting back though? Not sure since I haven't attempted to do that, the software might have a tool for that I haven't explored though.

[MrBaker89]

3 minutes ago, Agall said:

V2V Converter / P2V Converter - Converting VM Formats (starwindsoftware.com)

 

I've used this tool now dozens of times to convert desktops and servers to .vhdx. The first party Microsoft tool that used to let you do this is dead, and this was the most official one I could find. Doesn't try anything stupid either with pointing to WAN or such, so I would consider it safe.

Seems to do P2V / V2V but not V2P. 

[Agall]

Just now, MrBaker89 said:

Seems to do P2V / V2V but not V2P. 

V2P is something I haven't explored personally since I've not had a use case for it. Finding a legitimate P2V software was hard enough when I was searching for one where that was never something I scoped out. Might need a separate software for it.

[MrBaker89]

Just now, Agall said:

V2P is something I haven't explored personally since I've not had a use case for it. Finding a legitimate P2V software was hard enough when I was searching for one where that was never something I scoped out. Might need a separate software for it.

Thank you for your feedback, greatly appreciated. 

[igormp]

22 minutes ago, MrBaker89 said:

 

Converting the whole disk to VHDX to host as a machine on our Esxi client. 

You should still be able to convert it back as long as you can mount it or simply use dd on linux to do a block copy.

[MrBaker89]

Thank you all for your input and help. 

 

I have decided to create a site to site link.