Now that I’ve migrated my virtual machines from VMware Workstation to VMware Server, I’d also like to convert some of my physical machines into virtual ones. Although VMware offers a tool to do just that, it’s neither free nor can it be purchased from their web site. Even more, it’s filed into their “Enterprise Class” section, so it’s only available from authorized partners. Considering that it consists of just a small Windows application and a modified Knoppix boot CD for the clients (yes, I’ve worked with it before) that’s really strange. I’d say it better fits into the Free Virtualization category ;)
I’m currently in the same kind of problem !
Also the problem with the VMWare P2V product is that it can convert Windows only system, and all my system are on linux Redhat ES3.
I’m thinking about buying the powerconvert product from platespin (http://www.platespin.com/products/powerconvertmain.aspx) which seems more powerfull. The pricing makes it around 150€ per server conversion.
If you find a free solution, let us know !
Gaston
I already sent an inquiry to VMware. Let’s see what they’ll say. Besides: In my case it’s only Windows machines to be migrated, so I’d be quite happy with what P2V provides – as would most likely be the case for the majority of users.
Maybe not what you really want to do: recently I sucessfully used the import tool of VMware Workstation to convert the Norton Ghost image of my old notebook to a VM.
In your case this would mean an additional intermediate step.
If this additional step via Ghost would provide a way to migrate Linux systems, I’m quite certain many folks would find this acceptable. So, what OS was installed on your old notebook?
It was an old machine running Windows 2000. I don´t know whether this migration path works using Linux images.
Then why don’t you use Microsoft’s free physical machine converter to virtualize your pc’s and afterwards you can use those created vm’s in VMware as they SHOULD be compatible ;-)