How to convert a physical server into a Hyper-V virtual machine

Question

Let me explain my scenario.

I have a physical server (Supermicro 6015v-M3) with raid controller set to raid 1 and two disks, with Windows 2012 installed. One of the two drives is faulty.

What I am trying to do is convert the physical server to a virtual machine and run the vm on a different server running Windows 2012 R2 standard with Hyper-V

I thought the simplest solution was to use disk2vhd to create the vhd image, but I tried few times and everytime it stop when it reach 100%, and hang; I waited 10 hours before to kill the process.

Looking on forums I found people getting same result from disk2vhd when trying to use it with a hd with corrupted files; so I suspect the faulty drive has something to do with disk2vhd behavior, even if in my case there is no corrupt files... The other RAID disk is healthy (so far).

Now I am trying to find alternative ways to create a Hyper-V VM from that physical server, but so far I found reference to only two ways: 1) disk2vhd, which is currently not working for me, or 2) Windows System Center, which I don't have because I have Windows 2012 R2 standard licenses only.

Is there anything else I can try?

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Nov 24 '13 at 11:05

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Try that: Ignore anything but the system partition in P2V. No joke. Then, once done, macke a backup of the other partitions.

On the new virtual server (which only has the boot partition as physical disc).... then restore the backup.

answered Nov 24 '13 at 11:05

TomTom

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Thanks Tom, I am trying that. Do I have to backup only c: volume or also system state? – Max Favilli Nov 24 '13 at 13:47
I am sorry but out of respect of the rules of this website i do not answer questions that any beginner admin should know. – TomTom Nov 24 '13 at 13:52
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@MaxFavilli Yes, both. – Vick Vega Nov 25 '13 at 19:54

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Nov 25 '13 at 19:38

I have had some success doing a P2V conversion using VMWare P2V Converter. You install the P2V converter software on a target machine and you install another copy on another machine. On the target machine you configure the application to create an image and store it on the remote machine. In the end, you end up with a VMDK image (VMWare format) which can be converted to VHD with another tool.

Here is a link to the VMWare P2V converter (freeware, but you do need an account with VMWare to download)

http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

Here is a link to the StarWind VMDK to VHD Converter (Freeware).. looks like it can convert VHD to VMDK as well.

http://www.starwindsoftware.com/converter

I have used this method on 20 or so windows installs with various issues to make sure I have a full, bootable copy of the OS before I do a complete reinstall. Out of the approx 20 times I have used it, I think I have had it fail 2 times total - but I was able to kick off the imaging process again and it worked the second time.

If you are going to use this method, I highly reccomend that you launch the VMWare P2V app as an administrator to get past some of the issues you might run into if you run it as a regular application.

I will try this next week, I have to migrate few VM from vmware to W2k12R2, thanks. — Max Favilli, Dec 05 '13 at 12:11

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 21 '14 at 20:00

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In the end I found a few other people who had the same issue, and they were able to use the VHD file produced by Disk2hd. I terminated the program from TaskManager, used the file, and everything worked.

Seems for some reason Disk2vhd doesn't end normally but the produced file is ok.

edited Apr 21 '14 at 20:00

jdhurst

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answered Dec 05 '13 at 12:13

Max Favilli

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How to convert a physical server into a Hyper-V virtual machine

3 Answers3