It’s been a while since I had to P2V a Windows server but recently I found myself on a project doing P2Vs of business critical servers, again.
FYI: The new version of VMware VM Converter works great for converting a physical Windows and Linux server into a VM.
Once the conversion is completed, the new VM is online, VMtools are installed and the video acceleration is set, here are a couple more steps I learned about at a VMUG meeting that I recommend doing to finish the P2V job.
Removing Ghost Hardware for Best Performance
First – Remove Old Physical Hardware from the New Windows VM (picture shows “grayed” disk drives)
Step 1 –Â Log in to the VM
Step 2 –Â Open a command prompt
–Â Â Â Start > Run
–Â Â Â CMD
–Â Â Â Enter
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Step 3 – At the prompt type: set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
–Â Â Â Enter
–Â Â Â Type: start devmgmt.msc
–Â Â Â Enter
Step 4 – Wait for the Device Manager to open, then click on View > Show Hidden Devices
– Expand each category and search for “grayed” hardware
– Right click and click uninstall when “grayed” hardware is located
– Don’t worry about the System Devices category
– When all the hardware devices are gone, close the Device Manager and reboot
Second – Uninstall Old Hardware Specific Software
Step 1 – Log in to the VM
Step 2- Start > Control Panel > Add/Remove Programs
Step 3 – Carefully find and uninstall programs from IBM/Dell/HP/other used for drive arrays, networking, ILO, or any other similar application specific to the physical hardware.
Note: These items are not required now that the blade or rack server hardware has been virtualized.
Done – When all the applications have been uninstalled, close the Control Panel and reboot
Q: Why do remove ghost hardware after a P2V?
A: The reason I do these steps is that over the years I’ve had to troubleshoot VMs that I found were P2V’d by someone else and not cleaned up. This normally causes poor performance and issues with ghost hardware devices or drivers that conflict with the virtual hardware devices, more specifically – network adapters.
There – now all you need to do is make sure all your best practices are applied to the VM and it’s ready for production.
I am a VCI and each week I run into students have performed many P2V migrations, but were unaware of this process. It is very valuable information.
The one thing that I would add is that I uninstall the utilities first. I have encountered utils that would not uninstall cleanly because its associated driver was missing.
Best practice is to stop running Physical Server hardware specific services and then uninstall respective applications such as HP, Dell, IBM… like HP Storage Array, Ilo mgmt, Network teaming, etc… and then reboot server before perform remove un-used devices from device manager.