After you've used VMware Converter for a physical-to-virtual migration, what comes next? What happens if a conversion fails, or something else goes awry?
In part two of this series, we talked about preparation steps to ensure a successful conversion and also the process of running the conversion wizard. In this article in our series we will continue by discussing some post-conversion steps and tips for troubleshooting and resolving failed conversions.
Conversions sometimes fail no matter how careful you are preparing the server. The failure can occur at various stages in the conversion process; these stages are based on the task bar percent and are estimated values.
The conversion process may fail at any stage, but if it's going to fail, it will typically fail at 97%. Converter creates a detailed log file during the conversion process which will contain exact errors pertaining to why the conversion failed. This log file is located on the server you are converting that is running the Converter agent, and is usually named vmware-converter-0.log and is located in the C:\Windows\temp\vmware-temp directory. Open this log file and scroll towards the bottom and look for failure errors. Once the process fails, Converter will destroy the VM that it created automatically.
One clue to determine which stage it failed at is how fast it ge
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ts to 97%. If it jumps to 97% quickly and fails, this usually indicates a problem with network ports, DNS resolution or a required Windows service that is not running. Here are some things to try to resolve these types of problems.
If it takes a long time to get to 97%, then typically the clone failed during the data cloning process or the post-cloning procedures. Some possible causes of these types of failures can be lost network connectivity between the servers, excessive network errors and source disk problems. Here are some steps to try to resolve these types of problems.
Finally, if your conversion completes successfully but your server will not boot (or boots to a blue screen) you can try the following things to fix it.
Enhancing performance in a new virtual machine
When your conversion completes, there are several steps you should to do clean your new VM up so it will perform better.
That concludes this series of articles on using VMware Converter. Hopefully the information in these articles will help you in converting your physical servers to virtual ones.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Eric Siebert is a 25-year IT veteran with experience in programming, networking, telecom and systems administration. He is a guru-status moderator on the VMware community VMTN forums and maintains VMware-land.com, a VI3 information site.
