Physical to Virtual Machine

[sohaib]

Hello -

How do I convert my physical machine to proxmox KVM virtual machine, I am running windows 2008 server with Exchange Server and I wanted to convert that to PROXMOX virtual machine, please advise the process.

Thanks much

 

[bleomycin]

I just did this last night for the first time. What i did was create the KVM machine in proxmox with the appropriate amount of hard drive space. I used clonezilla http://clonezilla.org/ to make an image of the physical machine to a local server. I then booted the KVM machine with the clonezilla live iso and restored the backup image of the physical machine. Thats it, everything worked beautifully. This was a linux install, i'm not sure if windows will freak out about drivers (sorry i know nothing about windows)

 

[sohaib]

Thanks - so you run clonezilla on physical machine I am assuming you just booted with with CLONEZILLA ISO on your physical machine and than once you make a backup you than run CLONEZILLA ISO on your VM on PROXMOX and than import the backup via INTERNET correct,

 

[bleomycin]

That's right, i utilized a local file server to store/restore the backup but clonezilla will allow you to use any backup medium you like.

 

[m.ardito]

Don't forget to check everything here, at least:
http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migration_of_servers_to_Proxmox_VE

marco

 

[dlegg]

Firstly, read the wiki. There's a lot of good information as to how you can go about doing it.

Secondly, before attempting anything, especially when it comes to Windows, you need to audit what disks you have on the machine and how they are set up. If the disks are mirrored in some way then you need to break that mirror so it all boots off one disk or a set of independent disks.

Your sole objective in all of this is to get an image from the original machine, make sure it has the right hardware support to boot into a KVM environment, boot it in KVM and watch it boot successfully. If you can do that then you've got a chance. ;-)

 

[cyberbootje]

Sorry for kicking this thread but i read the wiki and it says: by using clonezilla live it is possible to migrate the physical server to a KVM machine and not have to make a virtual disk equal or larger then the physical disk.
I'm not able to do this, clonezilla says the operation failed because the destination is smaller then the source. What am i doing wrong?

Link: http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migrati...roxmox_VE_.28KVM.29_using_Clonezilla_Live_CDs

Edit: sorry i see now that it doesn't say that explicitley, it would be nice tough to mention that it has to be equal or bigger then the whole physical disk and not equal or bigger then the actual used space...

 

[tom]

the wiki pages explains a lot, also think of using the windows integrated windows backup (bare metal), probably quite fast and reliable (just test).