Clone your production system: VMware Converter 3.0
Imagine you have a problem on your production server. You try to reproduce the error on your dev, test and acceptance servers and they all work fine... Now what? How do you solve this? I really don't like to debug errors on the production machine..
VMware has the solution! They have created a free Physical to Virtual Convertion tool which does not require your server to go offline! They're currently in beta test, but will release within approximately 6 months with the final version.
What Is VMware Converter?
VMware Converter is a highly robust and scalable enterprise-class migration tool that reduces the time that IT managers spend converting physical machines to VMware virtual machines. Using a snapshot based cloning mechanism that is extremely fast and reliable, VMware Converter enables remote conversions without disrupting the source server during the conversion process.
For more information:
http://www.vmware.com/products/beta/converter/
If you can't wait until this product has been released, then you can work with VSMT, but you do need deep knowledge of AD, DNS etc.
The tool VSMT is developed by Microsoft and it works with Virtual Server and ADS. See this url for more information:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/evaluation/vsmt.mspx
9 comments:
Hmm microsoft have the same tool.=)
What about Active Directory? two servers(real and virtual) in network with the same name?
What tool does Microsoft have for this purpose gaploid? I'm aware of some tools, but the server needs to go down for some time for those tools.
AD will indeed cause a problem if you try to restore the server in the same network. If you do place the machine in an isolated network, then this will not be of any issue
It is very interesting.But tool still not availiable.
you can find more information about this microsoft tool here:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/evaluation/vsmt.mspx
So if you move virtual machine to isolated network for example with CRM (app+sql). it will stop working without AD, therefore i think you need to virtualize the AD machine too. And imagine you have separated servers for CRM, one this SQL, one with CRM app, so in a result you need to make 3 virtual servers, how do think all of them will be worked normally???
I was talking about the vsmt in conjunction with visual server and ads as well. I tested this on a development network, but this caused me to bring down the server for several hours.
You will indeed need to virtualize more then only the crm server, but would that be an issue? You can run multiple servers in virtual server and not all need too much memory. For instance, the ad server would live with 256 mb memory assigned.
so did you make such virtualization (ad + crm app + crm sql) successfully??
we try to make virtual infrastructure several times (AD, CRM app, CRM sql) and all of them was faild. There were a lot of trouble with AD.
I did only migrate the CRM server. The AD was already virtualized.
I am aware of client projects where my colleagues have succesfully migrated entire environments.
Is exist a tool which enable virtualizing already working ms crm server?If yes which one?
Thanks
Yes there is a tool already available, but you do need deep knowledge of AD, DNS etc.
The tool is called VSMT and it works with Virtual Server and ADS. See this url for more information:
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/evaluation/vsmt.mspx
I'll update the post with this information.
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