p2v san connected server

[tdubb123]

I want to p2v a physical dell server connected to a san with a bunch of volumes or drives. What is the procedure in doing this? Do I need RDM?

[weinstein5]

You can use RDMs if you want but I would recmmend using VMware Converter - it will be able to convert this server

If you find this or any other answer useful please consider awarding points by marking the answer correct or helpful

[IamTHEvilONE]

What size are those SAN volumes? if they are over 950 GB, then converter won't be able to do anything with them. Also, converter may not even pick them up:

http://kb.vmware.com/kb/1003368/

I have seen this happen with the PowerVault SAS connected to a 1950/2950, and the SAS LUNs don't show in Converter.

If they are under 950 GB, then converter will take those SAN volumes and make them into a VMDK file. I'm not sure if that's what you want.

Lastly, you could use converter to migrate the local drives to a virtual machine, then present the san volumes back to it via ESX and RDM .... if that's even possible, which is dependent on your setup.

Regards,

EvilOne

1 - Check the documents

2 - Search the forums

3 - Post Question

And remember to award points to those who assist you.

[geob]

In the past I have had issues with converter cloning the SAN connected volume. The issues were usually related to the snap of the volume failing because the converter tries to use Volume Shadow Copy and the SAN can't do it.

So my way around it was to clone the local disk, usually the C: drive containing the OS. And then adding Virtual disk the same size as the SAN volumes I wanted to clone. Power on the newly cloned VM, with the empty additional virtual disk. Then use MS robocopy to copy the contents from the physiacl to the virtual. There are switches that can be used with robocopy that will keep permissions in place.

You may also want to export the shares key from the registry before you start. This is just in case you loos share information.

The shares key is located in the registry here:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\lanmanserver\Shares

-geob