P2v conversion fail of a win2k8 r2 server with a software. Im not sure if the following will help you because i dont know anything about the vmware p2v converter, but here goes. I am loathe to answer because i dont use ubuntubased distributions and have little familiarity. Customer had a number of physical servers and xen instances that needed to be moved to the new vsphere environment. Verify your account to enable it peers to see that you are a professional. Now in this article i will show you steps to addremove partitions from your raid partition. Virt p2v is comprised of both virt p2v server, included in the virtv2v package, and the p2v client, available from the red hat customer portal as rhel6. Setting up a bootable multidevice raid 1 using linux. You cant get the hba to see you existing data since the ondisk format is different, and even if you could magically do that, then youd be presenting a file system that esxi doesnt support.
Introduction to the p2v utility converting hosts in interactive mode. P2v linux migrations are a combination of science, art and luck. Grub isnt actually using it as raid1 when booting i. Raid 0 is the easiest way to get more speed out of two or more drives, and lets you use a pretty cool acronym to boot. How to create a software raid 5 in linux mint ubuntu. You can use software raid devices for storage repositories or virtual disks. I was looking at possibly using clonezilla and it doesnt support software raid in linux either. P2v conversion of linux virtual machine for xenserver. Also, it only discusses how to setup a raid array for arbitrary storage. If the kernel panics because it can not mount the root drive, then the cause is almost certainly that your kernel is missing the mddegradedboot patch see section 4. Hi, ive got an oldish linux server here that i want to virtualize.
Simply import the mergeide registry hack and power off, use dd and other tools to dump the fulldisk and youre done. In addition, with p2v functionality added, it is much easier to virtualize your physical environment. How to set up software raid 1 on an existing linux. How to mount boot for p2v vmware vcenter converter. This howto describes how to use software raid under linux. Disk mirroring is a great way to gain some insurance against a single disk failure bringing down a critical system, as everything rewritten to one disk is also written to the other disk. To use the p2v utility, you boot from the oracle vm server iso on the physical computer you want to convert to a hardware virtualized guest. How to virtualize this oldish linux server to vmware. Is this a limitation of grub2, or of the os installers. For more advanced trainees it can be a desktop reference, and a collection of the base knowledge needed to proceed with system and network administration.
P2v fedora linux box with a software raid disk vmware. From this we come to know that raid 0 will write the half of the data to first disk and other half of the data to second disk. Unfortunately vmware standalone converter is unable to convert it because the server has a softraid on two of the three disks. If the kernel panics because it can not mount the root drive, then the cause is almost certainly that your kernel is missing the mddegraded boot patch see section 4.
A raid 056 on the other hand spreads the data over each disk in the set in chunks, theres no undoing it without destroying everything. Its quite easy to make p2v of windows base servers. Raid devices in nf helps the system assemble them at boot time. Then i put the ubuntu bootrepair iso on a usb stick and booted into that, and get a couple of messages upon startup. I tried using the utility disk2vhd to image the c drive into a. Nov, 2018 starwind v2v converter is a great tool intended to speed the process of hypervisor switch faster with minimum interaction of an it administrator. To host vmware vcenter converter standalone, you need a physical or virtual machine based on windows server. Virt p2v is comprised of both virtp2vserver, included in the virtv2v package, and the p2v client, available from the red hat customer portal as rhel6.
My understanding is that grub1 doesnt know anything about raid and so cant boot off any kind of raid array. Vmware converter is very powerful tool to provide physical to virtual conversion. Xen, kvm, openvz, virtualbox, vmware, linuxvserver and all other linux virtualization platforms are welcome. You can run the p2v utility interactively or as an automated process using a kickstart configuration file. Using raid 0 it will save as a in first disk and p in the second disk, then again p in first disk and l in second disk. I had a very similar issue trying to p2v a old linux server that had a 40gb hdd as boot but the real data was on another drive that the 40gb boot drive had access to so it was impossible as the actual data was not understandable to vmware convertor. We can use full disks, or we can use same sized partitions on different sized drives. Power down, remove one of the raid1 disks, and the system should boot and run now off the other disk without raid. Aug 12, 2014 5 comments on breaking a linux software raid 1 for import using vmware converter i rarely post supergeeky stuff on here, but since i couldnt find any good instructions to do this important and critical activity on the internet, and my coworkers had to piece together a set of steps that worked for us, i wanted to share what we learned. How to mount boot for p2v vmware vcenter converter by bmoore. P2v conversion fail of a win2k8 r2 server with a software raid. Converting hosts involves creating hardware virtualized guest images from existing physical computers. Recently i had to deal with migrating suse enterprise linux servers from the old environment to the vblock. Solved how to convert linux box with software raid5 to.
It also supports conversion of thirdparty virtual machines like hyperv and kvm. This approach allows the boot filesystem to be inside any raid system without the need of a complex manual configuration. Vmware have now released converter 4 which has support for p2v conversion of linux systems, but only live conversion using a helper vm which has a. For this reason is may be desirable to manually convert a linux physical machine to a xenserver vm. Device boot start end blocks id system devsdb1 1 17753 8388261 fd linux raid autodetect alternately, if your disks are the same size as they should be, see above you can copy the partition table from one to the other like this. During cloning of powered on linux machines, converter standalone does not recognize source volumes that are part of a software raid configuration also referred to as multiple disk, or md, configurations. This chapter explains how to use the physical to virtual p2v conversion utility to convert. Other than that, no, its not possible to do what you want. My problem however is that my linux box is using i think software raid 5 and the few software that i saw didnt play well with software raid. How to remove sw raid for vmware converter to work david. Thats because the boot is on software raid which is not supported by linux p2v.
Hi, im in trouble converting p2v a fedora 7 linux box into esxi 4. In our test rig, we used a pair of samsung 840evos with the latest firmware. We are trying to convert this old server into a virtual machine, then migrate to windows server 2016. How to remove linux software raid1 md raid onthefly so that. We just need to remember that the smallest of the hdds or partitions dictates the arrays capacity. Feb 10, 2012 while vmware converter 5 does a good job livecloning the existing linux servers, sometimes you have to use the cold clone boot cd if the physical server uses software raid and then boot vm from the broken mirror side, or sometimes the resulting vm does not boot because of issues with bootloader. In either case, youll need to have somewhere to boot esxi from, and to hold the vmx and vmdk files for this software raid vm this can be booting from usb and holding the vm on an external nfs device, or you can use the perc 6e for this, if you have an external disk chassis. The last versions of vmware converter claim to support p2v of linux based servers. Openstack, cloudstack, owncloud, cloud foundry, eucalyptus, nimbus, opennebula and all other linux cloud. How to virtualize red hat and centos linux physical server. This is only even plausible because it is in a mirror raid 1 so in theory the partitions should be fine after the operation and the filesystem will still know where the data is. Ideally with raid 1, raid 5, etc once can easily do a hot hdd swap as they support mirroring at the hardware level but to do the same on a software raid 1 becomes tricky as ideally an os shutdown is needed to avoid any application impact during the hdd swap. Converter is a pretty well made tool for being free. The softwareraid howto linux documentation project.
While configuring raid it is always advised to add a spare partition to your raid device so that in case. Migrating windows physical to virtual on linux kvm. Jun 24, 2005 at this point the raid module built into the kernel will try to assemble your raid 1 array using a nonexistant drive and your secondary, or mirror, drive. While configuring raid it is always advised to add a spare partition to your raid device so that in case of any hard disk failure the spare partition can be utilized. Besides its own formats for raid volumes metadata, linux software raid also supports external metadata formats, since version 2. As for converter supporting software raid, that is a very complex problem that not a lot of conversion tools dont support. Migrating windows physical to virtual on linux kvm for most windows systems, since windows 2000 the migration from physical to virtual is a snap. Notes from an investigation and repair of a degraded disk involving software raid on linux md. Converting red hat and centos linux physical server into vmware vsphere esx servers is not an easy task as compare to ms windows. The linux box has a software raid 1 disk mdadm that is not recognized by vcenter converter neither using cold clone with converter cd nor using converter standalone. If youve already decided to find a howto guide for converting your physical computer into a hyperv virtual. Using mdadm to create a software level raid1 for boot and root partitions. Convert physical linux server to vmware p2v vmware starwind. These instructions only discuss the last form of raid.
So software raid 5, as ill advised as that is, should have any affect on the process. We cover how to start, stop, or remove raid arrays, how to find information about both the raid device and the underlying storage components, and how to adjust the. This is the raid layer that is the standard in linux2. It addresses a specific version of the software raid layer, namely the 0. Linux virtualization and cloud this forum is for the discussion of all topics relating to linux virtualization and linux cloud platforms. No matter where you work, im sure youd also like to enjoy the benefits of a virtualized environment and especially the benefits of hyperv virtualization.
This guide was created as an overview of the linux operating system, geared toward new users as an exploration tour and getting started guide, with exercises at the end of each chapter. Step 2 mount a filespace somewhere with enough free space to store the image. The p2v utility then creates a virtual machine configuration file g and creates raw virtual disk images from the disks on the computer. How to perform disk replacement software raid 1 in linux. Centralized management console allows users to queue up and monitor multiple simultaneous remote, as well as local, conversions. At this point the raid module built into the kernel will try to assemble your raid1 array using a nonexistant drive and your secondary, or mirror, drive. Breaking a linux software raid 1 for import using vmware. Linux has supported the idea of software raid, particularly raid 1 or disk mirroring for a long time. How to remove sw raid for vmware converter to work david hrbac. Mar 26, 2015 raid 0 is the easiest way to get more speed out of two or more drives, and lets you use a pretty cool acronym to boot. Then e in first disk, like this it will continue the round robin process to save the data.
It is even harder is you have older version of red hat such as 7. Vmware have now released converter 4 which has support for p2v conversion of linux systems, but only live conversion using a helper vm which has a number of drawbacks for a start it only. Aug 16, 2016 how to manage raid arrays with mdadm on ubuntu 16. It is tricky verifying as the machine is remote, and the users dont have a clue. To boot off of a raid, you need a raid defined by a hardware raid controller, not a softwaredefined one like this tutorial is for, because a raids contents are not accessible without its raid controller, a controller that takes the form of software running within the oss scope cant start before the os does, and you cant boot an os off of a resource that requires that os to. If boot is the only important filesystem on software raid devmd you could workaround this by. Log in to your red hat account red hat customer portal. Step 1 boot the source system from the linux live cd.
My understanding is that grub1 doesnt know anything about raid and so cant boot off any kind of raid array except for raid arrays that look like a non raid array. Remember this will be the same size as the source machines hard disk. Reboot and select proper boot device or insert boot media in selected boot device and press a key i went back to do a sanity check and ended up just going through the process again only to get the same results. Chapter 10 converting physical hosts to virtual machines. Jan 29, 2009 step 1 boot the source system from the linux live cd. How to resize software raid partition in linux golinuxhub. Resolving linux boot issues after p2v with vmware converter. You can find more information about software raid in the oracle linux documentation at. Scsi driver loaded, this may save you from having to boot into linux rescue mode after. Starwind v2v converter newest update starwind blog. The physical to virtual p2v feature requires a red hat enterprise linux 6. In centos land you just create a raid1 boot partition and boot from it.
Linux handles raid and syncs the two boot partitions. The cold clone will have trouble figuring out your software raid. May 26, 2017 ideally with raid 1, raid 5, etc once can easily do a hot hdd swap as they support mirroring at the hardware level but to do the same on a software raid 1 becomes tricky as ideally an os shutdown is needed to avoid any application impact during the hdd swap. This chapter explains how to use the physical to virtual p2v conversion utility to convert hosts. Apr 28, 2017 how to create a software raid 5 on linux. Converting physical machines to virtual machines red.
Ive heard rumors that grub2 is able to support boot on raid 0, raid 1 or raid 5, metadata 0. How to set up software raid 0 for windows and linux pc gamer. The p2v utility then creates a virtual machine configuration file g and creates raw virtual disk images from the disks. Dear dennis, i have a very old dell windows 2003 server with a perc raid card set up for storage. Search search search highlighter onoff chapter 10 converting physical hosts to virtual machines. Esxi itself doesnt support any software raid implementation in any way, shape or form. The way that p2v work is that they read the data out from inside of the os, not by taking it offline and imaging that way. The most difficult and critical part of the p2v process is insuring that the migrated workload will actually boot, and have the needed drivers to access the virtual hardware once it has been transferred to the virtual machine. By default, converter standalone has a 20 minute timeout when waiting for the helper virtual machine to start up during linux p2v conversion. It looks like currently most os installers insist on putting boot on a nonraid partition or the kind of raid1 partition that looks like a nonraid partition, even the installers that support raid5 and grub2 im guessing this limitation is a historical relic leftover from grub1.
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