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VMware just announced to remove vCenter Converter from the list of VMware product downloads this week. If we plan to P2V migration today, we may look for another approach. Veeam is a good approach for P2V migration. Today we will discuss how to physical-to-virtual migration (P2V) with Veeam VBR.

P2V Procedures
1. Install the Veeam Agent on the source host
2. Create the backup job
3. Restore the backup into the target host
4. Migrate to production

Demo Environment
Veeam Backup and Replication v11a
Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows 5.0.2
VMware vCenter Server Appliance 7.0 Update 2
VMware vSphere 7.0 Update 2
Microsoft Windows 2012 R2 (Physical host)

P2V Migration

Install Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows on source host.

Create the backup job of the source host.

Select "Entire computer", then click Next.

Select "Veeam backup repository", click Next.

In Backup Server, specific the FQDN/IP address of VBR. Select the backup repository, click Next.

Select "Enable application-aware processing" and "Enable file system indexing", click Next.

Click Apply to confirm the backup job.

Then it starts to backup the source host.

When the backup job is completed, go to Veeam console to restore the backup into the target host.

Select "Instant Recovery to VMware vSphere"

Specific the required information for the destination host. It will reserve machine BIOS UUID. Click Next.

We can also enable "Scan the restored machine for malware prior to performing the recovery". Click Next.

Click Finish to confirm the restore operation. It will mount the NFS datastore on the target host.

It register the VM into the target host. Then power on the VM automatically and install the VMware Tools in the guest OS.

When the VM is restored successfully, we can verify the settings in the guest OS.

If everything is fine in the guest OS, we can migrate this VM to production.

Back to Veeam console, select "Migrate to production".

Click Finish to confirm the migration.

When the migration is completed successfully, we need to uninstall the "Veeam Agent for Microsoft Windows" and unusual software.

In this demo, Veeam shows how to P2V Microsoft Windows into the VMware vSphere.

Appendix

When we P2V Microsoft Windows into the VMware vSphere with VMware vCenter Converter Standalone, it also deploy the Converter Agent into the source host.

Hi, i tried this guide with a Windows 10 machine which i want to virtualize, but on this machine i am missing the option “guest processing” in the Veeam Agent. - Is this normal ? (I guess i can transfer Win10 anyway, but just saying)

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.

@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.

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.

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

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

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

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

The old converter did NOT support the incremental sync, it requires much of time for P2V and guest OS customization.

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

Great guide and a great alternative for the vCenter converter 👍

Nice done, @victorwu !

Again you could show how simple this task is!

Thanks. @vNote42 :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>

Yeah the same steps would apply for this as well.  Back up the SQL box and restore to Hyper-V as a VM.

Great, so with the application aware processing and indexing already enabled for the current backup jobs the entire computer backup should have everything required for the VM to restore in the same state the physical had been in. 

I have seen somewhat conflicting answers on other community forums where it is stated that Veeam is not intended as a P2V, but they are older than this thread. 

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?

Awesome post Victor now that converter is no more. 😎

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

@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

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

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

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.

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.

is there any way to influence the destination data store volume while restoring? 

@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. 👍

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.

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?

@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?

 

@regnor

Just another option :)

Other options are always good.  😁

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