P2V Conversion but want to leave the Physical Box Live

[nlongstreet]

We recently installed a VSphere 4 server in our enviroment for testing purposes. We wanted to move some of our test servers into a VM platform so we can power on/off as needed. One of the servers I have is being a pain with conversion due to a bad NIC. What I'd like to do is take our "live" server and run the conversion to a VM but change the Computer Name, IP info, etc. but than leave the physical server live. I know I'll need some downtime for the live system at some point but I just want to be sure I'm not missing anything or if VM adds any information that may cause this to fail. Any thoughts ideas or suggestions?

[Rubeck]

As long as you power on the converted VM disconnected from the network,

I think you'll be OK. Then you can do your basic reconfiguring of the

VM using the Remote Console, and then reconnect it to the network.....

but it all ofc depends on the running OS and installed aps. on the

converted server..

/Rubeck

[nlongstreet]

Its a Windows 2003 SP2 Server running a small application server using Pervasive as a back end.

[Troy_Clavell]

should be pretty straight forward. I wouldn't bring over the network adapter, but that's about it.

[Rubeck · Accepted solution]

For Windows 2003 itself it's all about renaming, but having the need for a app backend system would make it more difficult, imo.

Unless you P2V'ed this too, ofc...

I don't anything about Pervasive, but the idea of a duplicated app in a duplicated OS hitting a backend server, would be a no-no for me...

Sorry, can't help more than this... Good luck...

/Rubeck

[Troy_Clavell]

I agree with , the P2V process itself is easy enough, but if your application is sharing a common DB, then it probably not end well.

[nlongstreet]

It should be golden than. The databases are stored locally on the servers so 2 servers wont share 1 db. They'll share a common db name but the app is configured to use the IP address to point to which database it's looking for so as long as the IP address gets changed on the VM box I'll be good. I just wanted to be sure before I played with any "live" server. No worries I made sure I've got a backup on tape and disk just in case. Thanks so much for the answer I'll be sure to mark this answered!

[jb12345]

Don't forget to run Newsid (or Sysprep) on the VM.