Physical to Virtual (P2V) conversion for Windows Server Machine
I have been searching for software or solution that could convert a Windows PC / Server Machine to Virtual Machine that can run on RHV, but could not find any. Could anyone help?
I understand that V2V from any Hypervisor is possible, does that mean we need to do P2V conversion of the Windows machine to VHD or VDI or VMDK, then convert again using Virt-V2V? It seems to be quite complicated if this is the only way to do it.
Or is there any backup software can do it?
Responses
Guru
9710 points
Hi ! :)
You may want to check out the libguestfs project, especially virt-v2v might be what you're searching for : virt-v2v converts guests from a foreign hypervisor to run on KVM. It can read Linux and Windows guests running on VMware, Xen, Hyper-V and some other hypervisors, and convert them to KVM managed by libvirt, OpenStack, oVirt, Red Hat Virtualisation (RHV) or several other targets.
For converting a physical system to a virtual system you can use the virt-p2v tool which is also available from the libguestfs project.
virt-p2v converts a physical machine to run virtualized on KVM, managed by libvirt, OpenStack, oVirt, Red Hat Virtualisation (RHV).
First it seems to be complicated, but once you've figured out how to use the tools correctly, using them further on will be a 'breeze'.
Regards,
Christian
Community Member
45 points
Hi Christian, thanks for sharing. But what I want is a Physical to Virtual conversion. How do you convert a bare-metal Windows Server machine to a RHV virtual machine?
Guru
9710 points
Hi ! :)
You can use virt-p2v to do that ... I have just updated my original response to include this solution.
How exactly it has to be used and how everything works is well explained in the manual documents.
Regards,
Christian
Community Member
45 points
Ok, I will try it out. Thank you!
But just leaving some note here: I have read through the docs but it does not mention Windows Server is supported and how can the software run on Windows. I have read the document here: https://access.redhat.com/documentation/en-us/red_hat_enterprise_linux/6/html/v2v_guide/p2v_migration_moving_workloads_from_physical_to_virtual_machines-converting_physical_machines_to_virtual_machines
It seems to work the same way as the manual you provided, however, there is a discrepancy in the Pre-requisites page, where it mentioned the operating supported is for Virt-"V"2V, not P2V. So I'm still confused until I try it out... despite I hope to just do it the right way instead of trial and error.
Guru
9710 points
You're welcome ! :) I'll try to explain it as short as possible : The software does not "run on Windows" - you create a bootable medium with the content of the virt-p2v iso file, boot from this medium on the machine where Windows Server is installed and from there you connect via ssh to the machine where the Linux system and virt-v2v is installed ... then you start the conversion ... I wish you good luck ! :)
Regards,
Christian
Regards,
Christian
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