V2V cold clone process for SBS / exchange / sql / DC’s etc….. (works in vSphere)
Steps to convert from hyper-v guest to vmware guest
- Remove hyper-v integrated services while hyper-v guest is running. (if possible)
- Note down NIC networking details first
- Clean shutdown hyper-v guest
- Use StarWind Converter (free) to convert VHD to “dynamically growing VMware” image and use “IDE” as type. Note “SCSI” does NOT work if you have not got the LSI / BUS drivers in the source image, just use the default options – dynamic vmware and IDE.
- Create VMware guest shell (virtual machine equivalent to hyper-v specs but without the disks) – remove all hard drives, iscsi controller should also disappear.
- Upload the VMDK to same data store as virtual machine and attach to the virtual guest in the right order. They should be detected as “IDE”
- Start new vmware guest
- If you could not remove integrated services (i.e. hot clone), then you MUST disable hyper-v services immediately.
- Install vmware tools – reboot
- Remove hidden NIC and other orphaned devices, and reconfigure network card as per original.
- Windows may need to be re-activated – do this.
Note : converting a machine to use an IDE controller will limit its performance!
Here is a good presentation about vmwares DVS technology. Essentially a new way to create a vSwitch over a cluster and just add the required hosts into it.
http://download3.vmware.com/vdcos/demos/DVS_Demo_800×600.html
I’ve moved from a CentOS linux distro running vmware server 2.0 to OpenSolaris running VirtualBox. My previous system was totally headless and i wanted something similar to replace it.
I’ve just started getting into OpenSolaris for many reasons (Sun has some cool stuff – ZFS / VirtualBox). But I have always wanted to run OpenSolaris as a headless server, and from what i initially found VirtualBox didn’t have the easy to use autostart on boot features that vmware server had. But there are always ways to get things working…
OpenSolaris 2008.11 has desktop sharing (system->preferences->desktop sharing) which is half of the job — enable this.
I had issues if i used a password protected session (it kept prompting on the actual console for password to unlock the key chain), so chose not to prompt for password for now. Now every time after you have logged in you are able to connect to your machine via VNC. (veno-server)
The other half of the problem is how to have the machine automatically log on as a user on boot-up. This is easily enabled via /etc/x11/gdm/custom.conf or gdmadmin. See this post for more details on the autologon.
Updated : 26/07/2009
After a bit of playing about I’ve found another way to make opensolaris the perfect headless box. First fire up gdmsetup and enable the required remote sessions.
Go to the “Remote” tab and set the style to “same as local”, then under security ensure that “Deny TCP connections to Xserver” is not checked.
Next go into the services GUI and tick the box next to X server (x11/xvnc-inetd). Next type;
svcs | grep vnc
Disable all vnc services except the one we want to enable (below);
svcadm enable xvnc-inetd
Now to get the vnc session to remain open when you disconnect update the service with the following parameter change;
svccfg -s xvnc-inetd setprop inetd/wait = boolean: true
Reboot. Done.
You should upon reboot be able to vnc straight into the box with a session that wont reset on disconnect.
I’ve been dabbling with virtual box up until this point. But have decided to take it to the next step by using xvm to run my virtual machines. I have taken a guide from BDerzhavets at this site : http://bderzhavets.blogspot.com/2008/12/xvm-on-opensolaris-2008.html
First step is to open package manager and find the “vitalization” grouping. Install everything in this group. You’ll probably find some packages are already installed.
Next you’ll need to add the xvm kernel to the grub startup menu (menu.1st). This bit is a bit of blind faith from my perspective – its a shame that the xvm kernel package doesn’t add itself to grub? Anyhow… You need to add the following as another boot option in the /rpool/boot/grub/menu.lst file;
title OpenSolaris 2008.11 snv_101b_rc2 X86 xVM
bootfs rpool/ROOT/opensolaris
kernel$ /boot/$ISADIR/xen.gz
module$ /platform/i86xpv/kernel/$ISADIR/unix /platform/i86xpv/kernel/$ISADIR/unix -B $ZFS-BOOTFS
After a bit more reading you can apparently run bootadm -m upgrade to automatically ad the new kernel to the boot menu. But there might be some issues with on-boot? Some good info on this page : http://trevoro.ca/blog/2008/05/07/getting-xvm-to-work-in-opensolaris-200805/
…added the xVM entry automatically after performing the linkage steps. You will still need to add the ‘bootfs rpool/ROOT/opensolaris lines however.
Update : i have not implemented this yet – i’m currently happy with the stable file / virtual box server that i’m using at the moment. Its also a little early to check out this tech, as there is a lot of work being done at http://www.opensolaris.org/os/community/xen/ that is near completion.
One thing i like about vmware server 2.0, is that you are not forced to use the web console in all cases.
If you are lucky enough to have access to VMware Infrastructure Client 2.5 you can connect via it using the following syntax at the logon screen;
IP address / Name : http://192.168.9.100
If you enter a URL in the host field, use your root and correct password you should be able to logon without issue. Welcome to a nice fast GUI admin console.