Physical to Virtual Migration with Veeam



Show first post

58 comments

Ahh, ok, we are using the licensed workstation edition. - I guess the “agent for server”-license is not useable on an “windows 10” non-server-os. ;)

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

You can use the veeam agent for server license on a windows 10 pc :)

But it‘s not required if you want to virtualize your physical workstation. It will work fine without guest application aware processing. VSS snapshots (copy only) are still used to have a consistent state of the filesystem and applications.

Userlevel 7
Badge +13

@Anapi I would say it should also work with boot from SAN. The system sees this disk still as local and Veeam will be able create a backup from it. Linux on the other hand is sometimes a bit special with its disks, so it could be that you'll need to manually reconfigure some parts after the migration.

Both the Veeam Agents and Veeam Backup&Replication have a free/community edition.

Userlevel 7
Badge +7

Hi victor,

 

Thanks for sharing this. it was really nice approach, could u please help by replying below quries.

1- does it support Boot from SAN. Meaning, One of my customer running Linux (RHEL 6.8) instance which is booting from SAN. OS Kernel is located on SAN shared storage instead of local server disk.
2- Does this Veeam software free?
 

thanks in advanced

  1. I should be supported, you'll need to manually reconfigure some disk mount points after the migration.
  2. VBR have a free edition.
  3. You need to uninstall multipath software on Linux if it is installed after the P2V.
Userlevel 7
Badge +17

It is the same agent. If it is installed from the server, the VBR server has more control and gets more information.

I did not migrate an AD server from physical to virtual up to now. I don’t see a problem with this. Activate application aware backup for the AD, then all should be fine….

 

Edit:
Sorry Chris, did not see your answer before.

This can be done with physical servers with RedHat or SUSE or Oracle, etc (Linux).

@JMeixner @Chris.Childerhose 

Thank you very much. It helps me a lot!

Not a problem. Let us know how it goes. 👍

 

I moved 3 server from p2v.

Windows 2012 Terminal Server
Windows 2016 Domain controller
Windows 2016 Server with SAP

Everything worked fine, but the dc only startet in safe mode, after a few hours of searching i removed the safe mode with “msconfig” and everything ist ok.

 

Thank you again @JMeixner @Chris.Childerhose !

 

What a god send - I have spent hours on this !  Thank you I can sleep now.

Userlevel 7
Badge +17

It is an instant recovery, this uses the vPower NFS datastore.

You have to move the VM to the desired datastore on the cluster after you have it migrated to production.

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +7

Nice done, @victorwu !

Again you could show how simple this task is!

Thanks. @vNote42 :grin:

Userlevel 7
Badge +13

Great guide and a great alternative for the vCenter converter 👍

Userlevel 7
Badge +12

The only available option for this is an instant restore. And this need the vPower NFS datastore.

@JMeixner 

What about exporting the backup as virtual disks? It‘s possible to export an agent backup as VMDKs directly to a vmware datastore and then create a new vm and connect the exported disks to this vm. To many manual steps, I would never do it this way, but it works.

https://helpcenter.veeam.com/docs/backup/vsphere/exporting_disks.html?ver=110

Another way to directly migrate P2V and V2V :)

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-v2v-converter

Yes this converter works very well too as an option outside of Veeam.

Can I perform a P2V migration of a domain controller (regardless of versions 2003 to 2022) without major problems? In specific documentation, I see many restrictions, precisely on the UUID that usually changes in a cloning or conversion. Does this tool allow you to maintain the UUID and other characteristics regarding a domain controller?

Is there any more current documentation, mentioning about this P2V process of AD servers???

Grateful.

Userlevel 7
Badge +7

Another way to directly migrate P2V and V2V :)

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-v2v-converter

Yes this converter works very well too as an option outside of Veeam.

Can I perform a P2V migration of a domain controller (regardless of versions 2003 to 2022) without major problems? In specific documentation, I see many restrictions, precisely on the UUID that usually changes in a cloning or conversion. Does this tool allow you to maintain the UUID and other characteristics regarding a domain controller?

Is there any more current documentation, mentioning about this P2V process of AD servers???

Grateful.

You should be able to use that one or VMware has a specific converter that will also do AD servers and can be found here along with documentation - vCenter Converter: P2V Virtual Machine Converter | VMware

I P2V the AD by using VMware vCenter Converter in many times, 99% is successful.

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

@regnor

Just another option :)

Other options are always good.  😁

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

Absolutely great guide, but the old converter was faster :joy:

Faster but did not have things like Surebackup to validate your VM.  :grin:

Is this P2V conversion also workable in a Hyper-V VM environment? I need to migrate a physical SQL server on 2012R2 to Hyper-V VM, would the steps be the same? Or are there other considerations>

Thank you everyone for chipping in your thoughts. It was really a fantastic and knowledgeable experience. I was able to sort this out with your guidance.

Userlevel 1

Thank you for this nice guide, but it is necessary to install the Agent on Source Host? If i use Backup & Replication 11 (with universal License/Enterprise Plus) i can configure everything there, is it right?

Is there any difference for Windows Active Directory Servers?

Userlevel 1

@JMeixner 

Thank you for the very fast reply. I thought the Backup & Replication Server installed this Agent automaticly on the source system, or is that another client and in this case not working?

 

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

Is this a disadvantage to use the server controlled agent?

Is it possible to p2v migrate an Windows 2016 Active Directory?

No disadvantage at all as you can control things from VBR.

Yes you can P2V an AD server as long as Application Aware processing is enabled.

Userlevel 7
Badge +20

@JMeixner @Chris.Childerhose 

Thank you very much. It helps me a lot!

Not a problem. Let us know how it goes. 👍

 

I moved 3 server from p2v.

Windows 2012 Terminal Server
Windows 2016 Domain controller
Windows 2016 Server with SAP

Everything worked fine, but the dc only startet in safe mode, after a few hours of searching i removed the safe mode with “msconfig” and everything ist ok.

 

Thank you again @JMeixner @Chris.Childerhose !

 

You are welcome.  We are here to help anytime. 👍

I did it this way, but the hard disk size cannot be edited when the virtual machine is opened on the ESXi host
Userlevel 7
Badge +7
I did it this way, but the hard disk size cannot be edited when the virtual machine is opened on the ESXi host

@cong.xu  What is your ESXi edition?

Userlevel 4
Badge

@victorwu great article and simple explanation.

I did many migration using Veeam backup and restore.

We can use the agent managed by client side abd target VBR repository as explained in the great article.

 

Besides that, we can use Veeam agent managed by VBR to take the backup from the protected machines. Then restore to the target infrastructure (VMware in this case).

 

We can migrate Windows and Linux machines, all we have to check is the guest OS if applicable abd supported to install Veeam agent for (Windows, Linux,.. Etc) on it.

 

Here I have additional one question need verify. How can we deal with physical RDM and migrate it. 

What are the full steps to restore it? And how can we deal with physical RDM pointers to revert to initial state before migrating (make as is migration)?

 

Last thing to be mentioned that VMware vcenter Standalone 6.3 has been released on october 2022.

 

Thanks a lot

Dear All,

Where will it restore the Backup of Physical Machine. If I have multiple Datastores on VMware which one it will restore the backup as I don’t see any option to select datastore.

Comment