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3. Create a new VM with the converted system disk.
4. Add the other converted disks to the VM.
5. Start the VM and complete the hardware drivers configuration, if Windows prompts.
This allows:
the fastest replacement of the physical machine with the previously created virtual copy
moving multiple workloads from legacy physical servers to virtual machines to reduce
hardware maintenance and power consumption costs.
The alternative method of
physical to virtual
migration is by restoring a physical disk
from an image to a virtual machine. The procedure is the same as with restoring physical
machines.
To ensure booting up the system on the virtual machine, use Acronis Universal Restore. If
the target virtual drive is a SCSI hard drive, provide appropriate drivers. For example, the
VMware environment requires Buslogic or LSI logic drivers. Use drivers bundled with your
virtualization software or download the latest drivers versions from the software
manufacturer’s website. For more information about the recovery procedure see
Chapter
7. Restoring the backup data.
The inverse migration -
virtual to physical
- is done using common disk imaging and
restoring:
1. Create images of all (or some) virtual machine disks, including the system disk.
2. Restore the images to physical disks. When restoring a system disk, use Acronis
Universal Restore. Complete the hardware driver configuration if Windows prompts.
Combination of the two migration features gives you the flexibility to implement a lot of
scenarios, for example:
replace your physical server on the network with its virtual copy, while the server is
recovered or upgraded
test the new software or other changes you wish to make to the server on its virtual copy
and then apply the changes to the physical server.
13.3.4 Converting workloads
You can convert workloads from one virtual technology to another through imaging virtual
drives. For example, let’s say your company uses Microsoft Virtual Servers, but you need
to use VMware-based virtual appliances. This is easy to do with the conversion
functionality. Again, a Windows system image will be supplemented with appropriate
system drivers during conversion so that Windows could boot up on the other type of VM.
1. Create images of all (or some) virtual machine disks, including the system disk.
2. Convert the images to virtual disks of desired format.
3. Create a new VM of the desired type with the converted system disk.
4. Add the other converted disks to the VM.
5. Start the VM and complete the hardware driver configuration if Windows prompts.
13. 4 Converting disk images to virtual disks
To convert a disk image to a virtual disk file:
1. Do one of the following:
