Knowledge Base

There are two ways you can migrate the servers directly to virtual machines -- with and without using the P2V Boot CD for cloning.

Without Using the Boot CD for Cloning

In most cases, the best way to migrate your servers directly to virtual machines is to run P2V reconfiguration directly from the SAN without using the P2V boot CD for cloning. To do so, take the following steps:

1. Snapshot or back up the contents of your LUN.
2. Create a raw device mapping pointing to the LUN.
3. Add your newly created raw device mapping to a P2V Assistant helper virtual machine, as a second disk.
4. Run the helper virtual machine and create a primary bootable system disk using the P2V Assistant feature called "Perform a System Reconfiguration on an existing virtual disk that contains an operating system."

If your disk reconfiguration succeeds, take the following steps:

1. Create a new virtual machine using the raw device mapping on your virtual machine.
2. Boot your new virtual machine.

If your disk reconfiguration fails, or your new virtual machine fails to boot, or some other problem occurs, take the following steps:

1. Remove raw device mapping.
2. Restore the snapshot or backup taken at the beginning of the process.

Using the P2V Boot CD

You can migrate your data using the P2V boot CD over supported host bus adapters. To use these host bus adapters, make sure you load the appropriate drivers from the P2V boot CD. When the boot CD prompts you to load additional drivers, answer Yes.