Virtual-Server: Quick guide to virtualize you servers

Technorati Tag: Infrastructure,Virtual Server

1. Deploy Virtual Server R2 (more information here)
   1. You'll need an Host server for the new virtual machines;
   2. You'll need a Virtualizer server to perform the conversion job;
   3. You "should" have a Target server to virtualize.
2. Add the required components on the Virtualizer server:
   1. Install FULL ADS (more information here). Pay attention to install 1.0 and non 1.1!
   2. Install VSMT (more information on here)
   3. Take a look to VSMT help to understand where to begin...
      Don't expect to find a friendly interface.
      Everything must be  manually done and through scripts!
3. For each Target server that you have to virtualize (moving it on the Host server):
1. Delete unused spaces and defrag local disks.
   If you've Dynamic-Partition you need to convert them back to Basic
   (it's not so easy and PAY ATTENTION you can only virtualize system with Basic-Partions!)
2. Copy locally and Run gatherhw.exe.
   It will generate servername.xml and copy it back to the virtualizer server.
3. Check that everything is fine with:
   VMScript.exe /hwvalidate /hwinfofile:servername.xml
4. On the Virtualizer server run the following command to generate the migration scripts: vmscript /hwGenerateP2V /hwInfoFile:<GuestMachine>.xml /name:<VirtualMachineName> /vmConfigPath:<Your VSMT Directory>\vmconfig  /virtualDiskPath:d:\vmdisk /hwDestVS:<YourVSMcahine> /virtualDiskDynamic /vmMemory:256
5. Check that PXE support on your host server network card is on (to boot from the network)
6. On the Virtualizer server run the following commands:
1. C:\<VMST Directory>\p2v\<GuestMachine>\<GuestMachine>_Capture.cmd
   this will create the image and at the end of the process wil shut-down the Target server.
2. C:\<VSMT Directory>\p2v\<GuestMachinet>\<GuestMachine>_CreateVM.cmd
   this will create the configuration file for the new virtualized server (.vmc).
3. C:\<VSMT Directory>\p2v\<GuestMachine>\<GuestMachine>_DeployVM.cmd
   This will link the configuration to VirtualServer starting the new virtualized server.

Final Note (unfortunately last but not least):

VSMT doesn't support Dynamic-Partition. Every "real" WIndows server system is installed with Dynamic-Partion

...so any consideration is up to you...

The only thing you can do is to TRY to virtualize the disks of you server with WinImage without leveraging VSMT.

There is a lot of work to do for VSMT team for making it suitable for real world scenarios!