VMWARE V2V migration without shared storage
I would like to do the following:
Take Physical box running w2k8r2 and Sql2008R2 and do a P2V on it to a 4.1 Enterprise licensed cluster. --no worries here, I can do that part--
Take the existing physical box that is freed up and install vmware hypervisor 5.0 on it. --again I can do this part--
Do a v2v migration of the VM created in step #1 above from the Enterprise 4.1 Cluster to the standalone host. They are NOT using shared storage.
Step #3 is where I'm confused as to what my best option is. I found an article online talking about using Veeam FastSCP and just shutting down the vm on the cluster, removing it from inventory, copying the files over to the new host and then adding it to inventory. Is that the best way to accomplish this?
Solution 1:
My personal approach would be to use VMware Converter. It's called "Converter" but it should really be called "All-Purpose OS Data Mover." Doesn't roll off the tongue quite as nicely, though.
You can "convert" your VM from your step #1 to another VM that lives on the standalone host. You'll end up with two copies, just delete the original. One caveat is that the network adapter may not be exactly the same on the new VM, because the conversion process generates a new MAC address for the adapter so that you don't have duplicates on your network. Windows interprets this as a new piece of hardware, so make a careful note of the IP address, subnet mask, DNS, gateway, etc. You can annotate this on the VM directly using vSphere Client.
Of course, if you had vCenter Server set up with both hosts in its inventory, you could just "Migrate" the VM from host to host.