More P2V info from some forum

“The Path To Fast P2V” – The Quicksilver Project



We all have tons of physical machines we want to migrate to Virtual Hosts, and we all want to do it in a smooth low administrative cost process.

Well, all we have to do is to use the VSMT right? (Virtual Server Migration Toolkit). The problem is that its too complex to use it, and in the end the hours you spend to run all the VSMT process is maybe even bigger than the one you would take to set it up the hole thing again without VSMT at all!!

This is what I came up after some small researching.

I Managed to P2V in 2 Single Steps, and I would like to share my experience with you.

Suppose you have a nice Windows 2003 Sp1 Machine running on a old Server, and you want to P2V it to Virtual Server. Simply you use your cloning solution of you choise (preferably I use Acronis and Ghost), and deliver the image to the Virtual machine as it was a physical one.

Logical when the Virtual Machine boots you get a “Blue Screen of Death” because of the hardware Incompatibility.

All you have to do is to boot up the Virtual Machine with the Windows 2003 Sp1 CD, choose the R option to go to the Recovery Console, when you just get the famous “Dos Like Console”

This is the amazing part.. you copy from the CD of Windows 2003 Sp1 the hal.dll and ntoskrnl.exe and override in the Windows system32 directory.

In simple Commands you do as follows..

1.boot the Virtual machine with the cd of Windows 2003 SP1

2. Press R for the Recovery Console

3. choose your Windows Installation (usually option 1)

Go to windows system32 folder by typping cd c:\windows\system32

Then enter the drive letter of cd-rom (usually dJ

At d: prompt type cd i386

Then type as follows

Expand ntoskrnl.ex_ c:

Expand hal.dl_ c:

For each command you will take a notification for overwriting the original files.. we choose yes to replace the files.



Then rebout the machine, remove the cd-rom of window 2003 sp1, let the machine boot and press F8 to go to option menu for Safe Boot.

THERE YOU ARE, THE TARGET MACHINE IS BOOTING WITH NO ERRORS.

IT WILL AUTO DISCOVER ALL THE HARDWARE AND IT WILL PLAY OK



100% TESTED, MIGRATED MANY MACHINES LIKE THAT.



PLEASE FEEL FREE TO CONTACT ME FOR ANY INFORMATION YOU MAY NEED.



BEST REGARDS.



ALEXOPOULOS IOANNIS MCSE MCT MVP Candidate.

Ioannis_alexopoulos@hotmail.com (my msn account, feel free to add me)