On 16 Nov 2008, at 20:22, Stephen Rowles wrote:
> Hugo Mills wrote:
>> On Sun, Nov 16, 2008 at 08:11:25PM +0000, Stephen Rowles wrote:
>>
>>> I've tried looking around and cannot find the answer, does anyone
>>> know
>>> if it is possible to create a new VirtualBox machine running from an
>>> existing hard disk install of an OS? I have a windows install that
>>> is up
>>> and running with all my software installed and configured, it would
>>> be
>>> great if I could just great an image of that drive then run it inside
>>> VirtualBOX.
>>>
>>> Is that possible?
>>>
>>
>> Windows isn't likely to enjoy that. It'll see it as a complete
>> change of hardware, and is likely not to boot. You may be able to
>> persuade it to change all of its drivers to suitable ones using the
>> repair facility of the Windows install disk, but I've never had much
>> luck with that myself.
>>
>> Linux will generally cope rather better, as long as you haven't
>> built your own cut-down kernel for it.
>>
>> Hugo.
>>
> To reply to my own post, I found a link to a VMWare tool that would
> appear to allow you to create a virtual machine from an existing
> physical machine. These VMWare images can then be converted to work in
> VirtualBox (apparently)
>
> http://www.petri.co.il/
> virtual_convert_physical_machines_to_virtual_machines_with_vmware_conve
> rter.htm
>
> I might give this a try at work on Monday and see how it goes, if I get
> anywhere I'll report back :)
>
I have used VMWare Converter at work many times to take images of
physical machines and turn them in to virtual machines. I've only used
the Enterprise version, which we get as part of our VMWare Virtual
Infrastructure (or whatever it's called this week) licence.
It works extremely well in my experience, but as Huge said, Windows
will see a completely different set of hardware and will likely
complain about drivers. It will almost certainly make you re-licence it
unless you are using a Select key.
I have only ever used this tool to import a physical machine into a
VMWare cluster, however I'm pretty sure that you can ask it just to
create a vmdk file - an image of the physical machine's disk - instead
that could then be attached to an appropriate VM created within
VirtualBox. I don't know if you have to convert the vmdk file to
another format or if VirtualBox can understand it.
Unfortunately VMWare Converter is, as far as I'm aware, a Windows only
tool. I can't really see that changing.
Cheers,
Steve
