Migrate Server 2008R2 on VMware to XEN (on Debian)

Post date: Mar 11, 2016 2:53:42 PM

Long story short, I'm migrating all my VMware virtual server to XEN on a Debian (8 "Jessie") server. 

Requirements

• • Disk2vhd : https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx

  • Debian Server 

    • with Xen configured

    • and virtualbox installed (we'll needs one of it's utils)

  • 2008R2 server you want to migrate

  • Some shere to save the image to (SMB on another server, mount NFS share, etc)

First you'll need to convert your running Server to a vhdx file using disk2vhd

• • Leave "use VHDX" checked

  • And as I'll be converting a live server, well need to also check the  "Use Volume Shadow Copy"

  • Here I'm saving to "Z:\PD.vhdx"

    • Z: is my remote XEN server running SMB 

    • PD is my file & Server name

• Once that's done you'll need to login to your XEN server and CONVERT your VHDX image in to a RAW file that XEN can read and work with. The command for that is.

command

VBoxManage clonehd PD.VHDX PD.img -format RAW

• Now setup your XEN config file. Here's mine as an example

/etc/xen/pd.cfg

builder='hvm'

memory=4000

vcpus=3

name="pdexpress.vm"

vif=['mac=00:50:56:00:11:3,bridge=xenbr0']

disk=['file:/storage/virtuals/PD.img,hda,w']

boot="dc"

serial='pty'

vnc=1

vnclisten="0.0.0.0"

vncpasswd="somep7charpasswdgoeshere"

on_xend_stop='shutdown'

acpi=1

apic=1

stdvga=1

viridian=1

fx_passthru=0

localtime=1

pci_power_mgmt=1

xen_platform_pci=1

vgaram=128

• Notes

  • • On it's first boot it will notice that the hardware has changed, So you'll want to give it a few minutes to "adjust" and then reboot (twice).

    • You may want to install the "GPLPV" drivers for better performance. (See http://wiki.univention.com/index.php?title=Installing-signed-GPLPV-drivers and http://www.xenproject.org/developers/teams/windows-pv-drivers.html)]

    • Windows will need to reactivate -_-