create a .VHD from a physical server

[dionkoffie]

Hi all,

 

I'm currently in the process of migrating one of our physical server into our virtual cluster. The reason for this is because that server is still being run on older hardware. 

My idea is to create a .vhd of the disk and use it in our Hyper-V manager to create a virtual machine. 

 

I've seen a few programs that are capable of doing this but I'm looking for some advice or good recommendations. 

[userzero]

VMWare standalone converter might handle it. Or a one-time machine virtualisation through Symantec System Recovery. I've used both.

[dionkoffie]

8 minutes ago, userzero said:

VMWare standalone converter might handle it. Or a one-time machine virtualisation through Symantec System Recovery. I've used both.

Do you know if the VMWare standalone converter converts it to .VHD? 

[userzero]

Mmm good point, I'm not sure it handles VHD. Maybe best to try one of the free tools to do it for you, after a clone or backup obviously.

[jde3]

dd can cat the disk out to raw format (to something like a network drive) and VirtualBox has a tool to re-write into other formats. it can write pretty much all formats.

 

Couple things on this.. first you may want to clear freespace (write zeros to freespace), don't do it with the disk mounted, also don't select a partition get the entire disk. I think G4L boot disk might be able to do this but make sure you get a bytewise copy.

[Falconevo]

If its a windows box, just use virtual machine converter to convert the physical box to Hyper-V.  I would advise using .vhdx rather than .vhd and utilising 'gen2' virtual machines for better performance.

 

https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/tommypatterson/2014/10/14/microsoft-virtual-machine-converter-3-0-is-available-for-download-p2v-support-added/

 

What you are trying to accomplish is called a P2V (Physical to Virtual) and loads of applications are available from the usual suspects, Microsoft, VMWare, Citrix and some third parties too

[jde3]

@Falconevo It doesn't mater if it's windows or not. It's just a disk with raw data that needs to go somewhere else.

[dionkoffie]

Thnx for all the help.

 

I've tried several options, but I found Disk2VHD the best option to use. 

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/downloads/disk2vhd

[jde3]

Failure to clear free space will make the image much larger than it needs to be because your copying deleted data. (maybe even a previous OS install)

[Falconevo]

21 minutes ago, jde3 said:

@Falconevo It doesn't mater if it's windows or not. It's just a disk with raw data that needs to go somewhere else.

If its Windows though, the integration allows you to push it the P2V straight in to the Hyper-V host.  Rather than just creating a VHD/VHDX file and then having to create your own VM container etc.  Save's some time, he's using Disk2VHD which I have used in the past but that doesn't prepare the vhd output with the required drivers for Hyper-V or clears out any unwanted storage driver filters.  If the OS is Vista SP2 or above, it should have the Hyper-V integration drivers pre-installed which should allow it to boot