Vmware vsphere hypervisor is an operating system designed for pure virtualization and supports neither nat nor routing. One can employ various software utilities available out there for your v2v, p2v, or disk resizing tasks. I would go back to the customer and revise the buildrequirements. Top tips for using vmware vcenter converter 4sysops. Also to prevent problems, do not connect the vconverter into a vcenter, but into a vmware hostif you are using vcenter or vmware esx as the destination to that vm. I have been reading through its documentation though, and found something surprising. Starwind virtual san for vsphere linux software raid configuration. How to convert between preallocated and growable disks in. Nov 10, 2014 the converter works inside the machine so has no idea about the raid and doesnt care. Its quite easy to make p2v of windows base servers. What theyre talking about are raided windows volumes i. Only thing i had to do with the ssd is tell the host to id the raid 0 drive for the ssd which is a simple thing to do in an esxi host and reboot after that i installed the lsi providers vib so i can remote into the hosts and control the raid without rebooting the host all the time. Centralized management console allows users to queue up and monitor multiple simultaneous remote, as well as local, conversions. You can use many software utilities on the market for your p2v, v2v, and disk resizing operations, but the use of the vmware converter standalone tool is advised and in most cases is troublefree.
Breaking a linux software raid 1 for import using vmware. May 10, 2012 hi dont use dns names, use ip, for connections between converter and vmware source and destination. Vmdk2phys also supports converting vmdks to physical drives open disk2vhd and untick all volumes except the one you want to virtualize and pick a location to output the file to, then click the create button. Vmware vcenter converter is a free program, which has been there on the market for a while now. Using starwind vsan, the process of deploying vms, providing faulttolerant storage, connecting it to hypervisor, and creating highly available vms becomes a piece o cake. Reference documentation, the vmware vcenter converter standalone api reference guide, which provides languageneutral descriptive information object type definitions, properties, and method signatures, for example for the vmware vcenter converter standalone 6. While vmware converter 5 does a good job livecloning the existing linux servers, sometimes you have to use the cold clone boot cd if the physical server uses software raid and then boot vm from the broken mirror side, or sometimes the. Mar 19, 20 at first, vmware converter 5 is a software which permits you to convert physical server or pc into virtual machine. Other than that, no, its not possible to do what you want. Stop any software mirroring, break the mirror but not the data since vmware converter does not support software mirrors. This is only an option in vmware vcenter converter standalone. I use it on a dl20 g9 with mirrored enterprise ssds and it works great. Going to the datacenter and staying there is not an option. As for converter supporting software raid, that is a very complex problem that not a lot of conversion tools dont support.
The only purpose for this raid volume was media storage. Still, there are machines to reconfigure or convert, as the. The vmware firmware does not have fake raid software in there, so as a result it is not possible to imitate it like that. As a user of vmware products this makes me very happy, meaning i do not have to be booting the windows machine just to use vmware converter. Configuring starwind storage on top of software raid. For this task i use a free tool to do the job ccleaner. Sep 29, 2009 a customer has a noncritical hp server that they would like to p2v. How to install and use the vmware software manager youtube. Dec 29, 20 vmware converter is a software which permits you to convert physical server or pc into virtual machine. Vmware vcenter converter alternatives and similar software.
How to remove sw raid for vmware converter to work david hrbac. A customer has a noncritical hp server that they would like to p2v. Vmware vcenter converter refers to a vital program for various vmware administrators, which comes at no cost. Thats a fake raid setup, iow the raid software is in the firmware and handled by the cpu instead of by special raid hardware. Esxi itself doesnt support any software raid implementation in any way, shape or form. If you havent done so before the conversion, you should uninstall raid management tools, network teaming or management software, wireless. Are raid disks really universally unsupported for vmware converter. Vmware converter best practices esx virtualization. I downloaded vmwares vcenter converter standalone version 6. See reconfigure storage on an esxi host the new raid appears on the host as a new storage device that you can add as an extent to the hosts local vmfs datastore. Breaking a linux software raid 1 for import using vmware converter truk rambles.
Converter standalone supports all types of basic and dynamic disks for diskbased conversions except for gptmbr hybrid disks converter standalone supports source and destination disk drives with 512b 512e and 512n disk sector size only. A quick stroll with vmwares software manager for downloading and managing software repositories. I am using the converter to hotclone physical machines to vpss. I know and understand that this is not supported by the vmware converter. Or, you may want to convert a disk from growable to preallocated for maximum performance. Dynamic disks that also have a windows raid 10 or raid5 array ontop of them. Converter standalone does not recognize source volumes that reside on linux software raid configurations during cloning of powered on linux machines, converter standalone does not recognize source volumes that are part of a software raid configuration also referred to as multiple disk, or. Todays blog post explores how to convert hyperv to vmware vm with vmware vcenter converter. Starwind virtual san for vsphere linux software raid. The esxi hosts have all the drives connected through hba or raid controller in hba mode. Vmware converter is very powerful tool to provide physical to virtual conversion.
Vmware vconverter p2v for windows servers experts exchange. You can plug an external non raid usb disk into the server. Starwind virtual san for vsphere is installed on the esxi server. Vmware validated design for software defined data center. This list contains a total of 10 apps similar to vmware vcenter converter. The best method to convert hyperv to vmware vm is using vmware vcenter converter standalone, which is a special free utility designed for v2v virtual to virtual conversion and p2v physical to virtual conversion. Vmware normally creates growable disks, which start small and grow over time as you add data. I consider things like software zfs raid much safer than. Even after so many years of physical to virtual conversion p2v in various enterprises have over. The sas 6ir is not a true hardware raid controller. However, you can also create preallocated disks that start at their maximum size. I really dont get why such arbitary limitation is in place.
Vmware vcenter converter standalone provides an easytouse solution. So the converter doesnt care that there is raid and you shouldnt either. I plan to use the vmware converter, rather than the acronis vm recovery. Converter is a pretty well made tool for being free. How to remove sw raid for vmware converter to work david. Vmware vcenter converter standalone provides an easytouse solution that automates the process of creating vmware virtual machines from physical machines running windows and linux and other virtual machine formats. Make sure that the prerequisites for deploying software raid with starwind virtual san are met. Aug 12, 2014 5 comments on breaking a linux software raid 1 for import using vmware converter i rarely post supergeeky stuff on here, but since i couldnt find any good instructions to do this important and critical activity on the internet, and my coworkers had to piece together a set of steps that worked for us, i wanted to share what we learned. And check scsi and raid controllers if there is storage disks and fc adapters. I have a hosted virtual private ubuntu server that i have no physical access to. When you create a guest vm create 2 identitcal vmfs volumes and attach it to the guest vm.
And you can revert this all very easily by restoring the backups of fstab and menu. This magical piece of this free software can at the same time align properly the destination vms virtual disks in order to get the best possible performance. It is installed with 2 x sata disks without a sata raid controller, runs windows server 2003 and uses software raid 1 mirror over the two disks which are set as dynamic. The converter works inside the machine so has no idea about the raid and doesnt care. Vmware converter is the free utility from vmware which helps to convert your windows and linux based physical machines and thirdparty image formats such as backup images, also other virtual machines to vmware virtual machines. Virtualizing old centos 5 server with software raid disks vmware converter does decent job converting old physical servers to virtual machines, but it refuses to do anything to servers using software raid. Adding software raid support to esxi would take a good deal of work theres a lot of kernel support that would need to be added, plus quite a few userspace utilities.
Now that we have the perccli utility installed on our vmware esxi host, lets take a look at the available commands and how we can manage dell raid in vmware esxi 6. Hi dont use dns names, use ip, for connections between converter and vmwaresource and destination. How to remove linux software raid1 md raid onthefly so that. At first, vmware converter 5 is a software which permits you to convert physical server or pc into virtual machine. I am going to install two hosts with vmware esx version 4. To see all the commands and parameters available, we can simply run the. It also supports conversion of thirdparty virtual machines like hyperv and kvm. Use the rescue media cd of acronis true image 10 or acronis. Several discussion group participants recommend doing the following workaround for doing p2v for a raid array. Popular alternatives to vmware vcenter converter for windows, software as a service saas, mac, linux, web and more. After converting a physical machine using vmware converter, you experience these.
Vmware converter best practices virtualization blog. Once disk2vhd finishes open starwind v2v converter select local file and click next when it asks for the source image location select the source image then click next select the format you want to convert to the 1st and 3rd option are probably the most compatible option with vmware workstation player. The version of vmware vcenter converter bundled with vsphere 4. Vmware vcenter converter converts local and remote physical machines into virtual machines without any downtime. Another part of p2v or v2v work can be a situation when you want to resize a virtual disk or reclaim some dead space from within a thin provisioned disk. Vmware converter installation on ubuntu linux linux users will be pleased to discover that vmware converter is now available on linux free of charge.
Filter by license to discover only free or open source alternatives. Mar 06, 2011 required software vmware vcenter converter boot cd. Software raid support exists in esxi for the hpe dynamic smart array controller. Install new storage disks and create a new raid set using the disks.
Resolving linux boot issues after p2v with vmware converter. Some server brands use dedicated partitions to hold the restore raid point. You cant get the hba to see you existing data since the ondisk format is different, and even if you could magically do that, then youd be presenting a file system that esxi doesnt support. Ok so vmware answered me about this error message and it seems vcenter converter doesnt support raid software. Vmware vcenter converter standalone release notes but, see that workaround. If the physical machine is a linux virtual machine, vcenter converter will really do not support that configuration, see. Feb 10, 2012 while vmware converter 5 does a good job livecloning the existing linux servers, sometimes you have to use the cold clone boot cd if the physical server uses software raid and then boot vm from the broken mirror side, or sometimes the resulting vm does not boot because of issues with bootloader.
Converter standalone does not recognize source volumes that reside on linux software raid configurations during cloning of powered on linux machines, converter standalone does not recognize source volumes that are part of a software raid configuration also referred to as multiple disk, or md, configurations. Its fakeraid, essentially propriatery software raid. Besides that, the linux emulation layer in esxi loads after vmkernel, which raises questions as to whether you could actually get esxi booted correctly with a software raid. It really doesnt matter if physical server used raid, software or not, because. If you want to compact a disk later, youll need to convert it from preallocated to growable. There is a variety of choices between software raids e. If your question has been resolved please mark the answers as helpful or correct. Vmware vcenter converter does not only perform p2v but even v2v virtual to virtual conversions. Ubuntu software raid server and vmware conversion tool.
Troubleshooting checklist for vmware converter 1016330. Vmware is expanding the capabilities of virtual san as a platform and is introducing better data efficiency features by delivering deduplication and compression of data as well as providing raid 5 raid 6 support for all flash virtual san environment. I downloaded vmware s vcenter converter standalone version 6. Get a free download of vmware vcenter converter to automate and simplify physical to virtual machine conversions as well as conversions between virtual machine formats. Software raid underneath esxi datastore server fault. On the old system, i had a raid volume set up to hold all my media for my network, tv shows, movies, software, etc. I agree with your statement in regards to the perc controllers. A guide to converting hyperv vms to vmware by nakivo. Adding an old softwareraid array to a softwareraid installation boot problems.
Amazing tips for employing vmware vcenter converter. Converter and software raid linux vmware communities. Use the rescue media cd of acronis true image 10 or acronis true image 11 to convert the raid array to a single. Make a vmware copy of a live linux server cedric walter home. The last versions of vmware converter claim to support p2v of linux based servers. I was looking at possibly using clonezilla and it doesnt support software raid in linux either. Are raid disks really universally unsupported for vmware. Explore 10 apps like vmware vcenter converter, all suggested and ranked by the alternativeto user community. Vmware validated design for softwaredefined data center. How to convert a physical disk to a vmware vmdk image jas tech. The raid is an abstraction layer outside of the os as long as you are using hardware raid and the raid is truly just a single disk to the os. Could someone please tell me what the best way is to downgrade the software raid to single disk remotely.
Vmware converter does not support software raid on linux. Dec 20, 2014 vmware converter does decent job converting old physical servers to virtual machines, but it refuses to do anything to servers using software raid. Ive recently found vmdk2phys which is still in beta and doesnt look the best but is more straightforward then following the guide below. Raid drives are listed as unsupported source volumes for all formats. Vmware converter is a software which permits you to convert physical server or pc into virtual machine. On top of this, the mirrored disks are split into two logical partitions, c. Guest os will have redundancy in this case, but not for esxi hypervisor. Virtualizing old centos 5 server with software raid disks. Applications and drivers that may not convert with virtual machines.