VMWare V2V Hot Migration

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Ever been in a situation where you have a remotely hosed virtual machine and you want to clone it to your local vCenter cluster?

 

Just about all V2V migrations are cold migrations, which require that the source system be powered off during the conversion process. It is, however, possible to perform a hot migration of a virtual machine using the hot migration method as described in How to Import a Virtual Machine into ESXi: Part 1. After installing vCenter Converter Standalone to the virtual machine, launch the Conversion wizard. Select “Powered-On Machine” from the drop-down menu, click “Local Machine,” and then follow the same steps as described in the section P2V: Hot Migration.

 

V2V: Hot Migration

 

Suggestion: stop all services on the source VM if there are any database servers or services which would be changing data during the process.

  1. To perform a V2V hot migration in vCenter Converter Standalone, click “Convert Machine.” Select “Powered-on Machine” from the drop-down menu on the Source System tab.
  2. Select “This Local Machine” if you intend to migrate the physical machine to where VMware vCenter Conversion is installed. Otherwise, click “A Remote Machine” and then enter the IP address and login credentials for the source system. Click “Next.”
  3. Select “VMware Infrastructure Virtual Machine” from the drop-down menu. Enter the server address and login credentials for the system running VMware ESX/ESXi. Click “Next.”
  4. Review the system parameters on the Options tab. To make changes to a device, network or service option, select the desired setting from the list.

Click “Advanced Options” to synchronize the source system with the destination system immediately after cloning or at a scheduled date and time. If you’re cloning a Windows machine, it’s recommended that you check “Install VMware Tools on the Destination Virtual Machine” and “Remove System Restore Checkpoints on Destination” on the Post-Conversion tab.

Click “Next” after making the desired modifications, if applicable.

  1. Review your configuration on the Summary tab; then click “Finish” to perform the migration.