P2V and the GPT Disk.. Part 2

In the previous post I had installed the Double Take - Move product and synchronized the servers. Then on 12/27 I was able to execute the fail-over to the VM. I logged into the software and it gave the option of using one of the "point in time" replications or using "live data". Since I wanted to make sure that the copy was the most current possible I chose the "live data" option. Double Take then shut down the source server, finalized the target server and then rebooted the target and then was done. It was almost anti-climactic. I then installed VMware Tools (which the mouse driver gave me an issue.. not sure why) and then turned it over to the customer. They logged into the server and checked. The databases were online and a user checked the application. All was operating as advertised. Thank you DoubleTake for making me look good!

P2V and the GPT Disk

For the better part of 2010 I have been working on performing P2V migrations. Taking a Physical server and turning it into a Virtual Machine for the unwashed masses. For the most part the process of turning a physical server into a VM is fairly painless.

However, I did most recently run across an issue with a server with a dreaded GPT (GUID Partition Table) boot disk and NONE of the P2V utilities that I would normally use would work. This GPT boot disk is a fairly recent phenomenon since it requires a EFI BIOS in order to understand what to do with it. To make matters worse the RAID group was 2095 or so GB in size (there was only 350GB used however).

As I stated previously, I did try everything I could think of in my arsenal. VMware Converter, Vizioncore vConverter, Novell PlateSpin.. NOTHING was working. I even thought of using Windows System Backup.

What was our superhero to do...

To the rescue came Vision Solutions - DoubleTake Move . It is a bit different in that it requires that there be a SOURCE and a TARGET rather than a copy of the SOURCE BECOMING the TARGET. So I loaded Windows 2008 onto the target and installed the software. I then installed the software onto the source server and created a mirror set... they connected and began to synchronize. After they are in sync you select "Failover" and the source server shuts down and the target is renamed to the source name. I have not done this part yet.. stay tuned for part 2 of our exciting adventure (This is where Max my dog would yawn).

Merry Christmas to all..

Long Time Coming

Ok.. So it has been a while since I have entered a post. It does not mean that I have not been doing anything. Quite the contrary. Now that I have had a chance to breathe I will begin entering some posts that will hopefully be of interest. They will probably be more on the lines of VMware ESX 4 and ESXi 4 since that is what I have been working with as of late. Without any further waste of time, here is the first post:

Setting up your own iSCSI...

The average person is probably thinking "What is iSCSI and why would I care" but the VMware folks in our midst are saying "Tell me more...". I needed to set up a VMware ESX environment at home to test ESXi 4 and some other VMware products. Working on a budget, I sourced a used Dell PE2850 and downloaded the free ESXi from VMware. Now back to the budget. I managed to get the server with 2 - 18GB disks but I did not have much in the way of money left for additional space. So out with the iSCSI solution. Since ESXi will connect to iSCSI over a normal Ethernet network I could add an larger SATA drive to a normal PC and then present it via the iSCSI software to the ESXi host and BANG.. more ESXi storage.