Question about using P2V to move a domain controller 4

[pathaide]

Just wondering if anyone has any thoughts about migrating a domain controller to vmware using the p2v converter? Are there any issues I need to be concerned about?

Thanks

 

[onefortheroad]

tried this a while back at the request of a customer, spent the folowing night with a Microsoft consultant rebuilding all the AD. wouldn't advise any one to do this as a migration.

 

[jfrantz]

I've done it several times with Ultimate P2V (BartPE with free tools) and had no problems. I recommend that you keep the VM-NIC disabled on the virtual machine until you get the VMware tools installed and everything is configured exactly as the physical machine was.

-Jeff

 

[anawrocki]

Been there, done that. Not sure I would want to do it for production or DR purposes, but did all of our DCs for a test environment with VMWare converter. I spent 3 days getting replication consistent and in the end did get it to work quite well but it still would not rest well for me if it were a production environment.

If I were needing to virtualize DCs in Prod I would build new from scratch and migrate roles as needed.

 

[Arisap]

I would agree with anawrocki. It is easier and certainly cleaner to create a new VM as the DC, wait for replication, and change roles as needed. I too have tried P2V'ing DC's and it was an absolute nightmare.

 

[Cstorms]

Not that this will help a ton, but I loaded an Acronis image of our DC onto a crapbox machine (wayyyy off on comparable specs) and then used vmwares converter to do the whole p2v onto another crapbox machine. It went fine and ran for a day. As a sidenote I loaded 2 more machines that way and learned the hard way that I had a faulty memory stick installed. Didnt matter to much though as I just wanted to see how the DC would play when converted.