VMWare Converter - Remote Linux Install P2V

Solution 1:

This is a confusing thing to do.

It basically involves 4 systems: 1) System where you install the Standalone Converter (e.g. your laptop); 2) Physical System you want to convert; 3) ESXi (Virtual Infrastructure) System installed to a USB key and booted on a separate PC and wired up to 4) another System that is exposing an NFS share.

I think once you understand that from your laptop you initiate the process from the Converter client, select the Physical system to convert (SOURCE) and direct it to the ESXi System (DESTINATION) that has mounted the NFS share to STORE the converted (Virtual) machine it makes more sense. But yah, VMWare docs need to do a much better job of explaining it.

Hope this helps.

Cheers

Solution 2:

To carry out a VMWare Converter conversion you need both a source and a target. The source can be a live physical system or an existing VM that you wish to move to a different platform. The target can be a VMware Infrastructure Host running ESX or ESXi or a VMWare Workstation Virtual Machine or a Virtual Appliance, for a live P2V conversion it cannot simply be a location to drop the resulting VM files unfortunately.

When you run a live P2V conversion the agent is remotely installed on the Source system and it sends a snapshot of itself over a network connection to the target.

There are some limitations especially for Linux Systems. Converter (as of V4) only supports live conversion of physical Linux systems when the Target is an ESX or ESXi host. In your case if you want to use Converter you can build an ESXi host and use that as the target. It's free and relatively simple to set up if all you want to do is use it as a conversion target. Once you have the VM running successfully under ESXi you can use Converter again to move it to a VMware Workstation instance if you prefer.

The Converter User Guide is available here and has all of the details you need. You can get a copy of ESXi here.