clonezilla to VMware?

Discussion in 'Virtual and Cloud Computing' started by veloce, Jun 3, 2010.

  1. veloce

    veloce Byte Poster

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    Folks,

    I currently have VMWare Player 3 running a clean install of XP sp3 on my new HP Pavillion.

    What I am hoping to do is take my old Dell Laptop, clone the entire drive (XP SP3) and import the image into VMWare on my HP.

    The host machine is running Vista with 7 on a partition.

    Does anyone know if I can import a Clonezilla image into VMWare?


    Thanks
     
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  2. dales

    dales Terabyte Poster

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    Clonezilla wont really do the job, you could create the clone file then boot clonezilla again in the new blank vm and restore the file but the image would probably spaz out due to the changes in hardware, what you would be better off using to create the vm is this. http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

    Although I do really like clonezilla, its probably not right for what you want to use it for.
     
    Last edited: Jun 3, 2010
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  3. SimonD
    Honorary Member

    SimonD Terabyte Poster

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    Could you not invesitgate a P2V utility, even if you just install Vmware server to get the use of the P2V utility that way?
     
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  4. veloce

    veloce Byte Poster

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    thanks Guys, I think I will just stick with the VCenter Converter.
     
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  5. nugget
    Honorary Member

    nugget Junior toady

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    VMware can supply you with a p2v converter from here. It works very well.
     
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  6. GSteer

    GSteer Megabyte Poster

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    Ok, I'll tag on to this thread as it's directly relevent to an issue this week.

    I've got an image of a clients Server 2000 Box (voicemail phone system) made with clonezilla. We're intending to virtualise it ultimately (current box as RAM issue which are being addressed but it's an old Poweredge 600SC and noisy as hell).

    Looking at that VMware vCenter Converter I'm guessing that the following process might work?

    1) Re-image from the clonezilla image to a drive
    2) Ghost the drive to create a ghosted image
    3) Use VMware vCenter Converter to convert this ghosted image to a VM

    Thoughts?

    My only concern is the docs don't state which Windows OS versions are supported and with 2000 being, er, older, is that a concern? I'll be giving it a shot on Monday anyway.
     
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  7. dales

    dales Terabyte Poster

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    Is there a reason for steps one and two you could just run the conversion on the live server only thing with a 2000 box is it will need to be rebooted after the converter has installed its tools.
     
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  8. supernova

    supernova Gigabyte Poster

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  9. supernova

    supernova Gigabyte Poster

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    that's what i was going to say, also you dont actually have to runit directly as long as you have administrative access
     
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  10. GSteer

    GSteer Megabyte Poster

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    Good question.

    The server is a 30min drive away from my office I am going back out on site once the RAM arrives though and I do have remote access.

    Rebooting is not a problem, it's voicemail only and tbh they weren't complaining last time it was down.
     
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  11. GSteer

    GSteer Megabyte Poster

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    Well, as an update to the above, it is possible to go from a clonezilla image to a running VMware box, with about a hundred steps...but it worked without having to go onsite again to fight with an old box that didn't want to see new hardware (I could have got away with attaching an internal IDE drive to it if I had one).

    Anyway, a shortened version for those that might be interested, of the process I actually went through, followed by the way I'd do it next time if I really can't do a direct live->vm conversion

    1. Grab a clonezilla image of your desired box, Dell Poweredge 600SC with Windows 2000 Advanced Server in this case, onsite using whatever you took with you, 30Gb IDE drive in this case which was 10Gb smaller than the existing 40Gb drive (mental note, find out what you're walking in to first)
    2. Back at base: Re-image this clone to a new drive, modern hardware is now an option, ie SATA, leave the drive physically attached to your system.
    3. See note #1
    4. Download and install the Acronis 10 Trial
    5. Re-image drive to an Acronis *.tib file (see note #2)
    6. Create Acronis bootable ISO
    7. Create temporary VM, with the desired size IDE drive, attach your local physical drive to it that contains your image file, set to boot from the Acronis bootable ISO
    8. Boot the VM, use Acronis to reimage your image file to the VM's IDE drive (see note #3)
    9. Once complete, power off the VM, do not restart
    10. Download and install the Vmware vConverter
    11. Convert this temp VM in to a new VM (workstation selected for both but was using Vmware Player 3.1) and make sure that you select "Install VMWare tools" during the conversion options stage (you'll need to download the relevant sysprep files from Microsoft) - this allows the injection of the required file sto get the OS booting in the VM
    12. Wait for the conversion to finish (in my case head to bed for 6 hours), then add a new machine to the Player, selecting the converted output, making sure to remove any shared/mapped physical drives, boot and enjoy.

    Note #1 - As an aside at this point I also took a ghosted image of the reimaged SATA drive and attempted to run the vConverter directly from this, only to find that although it says "Norton Ghost Files" in the text of the supported Third Party images it actually means sv2i files (KB article here)

    Note #2 - The reason for this was that Vmware vConverter stated that it could convert directly from *.tib files, now I'm not sure if I did something wrong with the imaging, but it really didn't like my file and wouldn't run with it, hence the faffing (steps 5-7) with the temp VM and reimaging internally.

    Note #3 - In hindsight of Note #1 I could simply have ignored Acronis and reimaged into the VM using clonezilla, that's the theory but I didn't try/test it so unsure of the outcome.

    If I needed to do it next time, what would I do differently?

    1. Prepare better for the onsite visit with a definite decision already made to take a P2V copy.
    2. See if I could internally re-image directly from the clonezilla image, ignoring the entire Acronis stage.

    If nothing else it flexed the mental muscles slightly for once and was an, er, enjoyable jigsaw puzzle for a Sunday. Now stop giggling at me.
     
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