System Center Virtual Machine Manager: P2V

Today I had the opportunity to try out the “Physical to Virtual” task in the SCVMM 2008 Beta.  You can get a copy of the beta from the connect site.

I installed the SCVMM 2008 Beta on Windows Server 2008 x64 and since I also have the Hyper-V role on that machine I added it as a host in SCVMM.  The machine we converted to a VM was a member of the same domain as the WS08 machine; I had tried earlier to do a P2V from a perimeter network and it failed during the conversion.

The machine we converted was a Windows 2000 w/SP4 Workstation, we had credentials which were local admin on the box which you will need to do this or you will get a WMI error as some software is installed onto the machine being converted.

The whole process took about 20-30 minutes and when it was done the Physical Machine was shutdown and the Virtual Machine sprang to life, the only thing I did when the conversion was complete was install the “Integration Services” which are supported under W2K SP4 and remove the legacy network adapter and replace it with a standard network adapter under the VM settings.

I’m hooked, going to do another P2V next week – this time with Vista!