Is there a formal, or preferred, method for importing a physical CentOS machine into a VMware instance? I know they make software to move Windows machines, but I couldn't find one to handle our CentOS servers. I have done something via scp/sftp in the past, which *seemed* to work, but if there's a better way I'm more than interested in hearing the process. Thanks! Scott
Scott Moseman wrote:> Is there a formal, or preferred, method for importing a physical > CentOS machine into a VMware instance? I know they make > software to move Windows machines, but I couldn't find one to > handle our CentOS servers. I have done something via scp/sftp > in the past, which *seemed* to work, but if there's a better way > I'm more than interested in hearing the process.What has worked for me is to use a liveCD to boot the image and then use ssh and tar to clone the machine to the virtual drives. You can find people suggesting netcat to do it but the ssh /tar method works because just about every liveCD has ssh and tar. Just mount the drive on the virt server say /mnt/newroot/, and if you separate images from from the image run: # ssh remote.box.com tar c / | tar x -C /mnt/newroot Adjust the tar attributes as needed. Rick
On Wed, 2007-08-08 at 10:44 -0500, Scott Moseman wrote:> Is there a formal, or preferred, method for importing a physical > CentOS machine into a VMware instance? I know they make > software to move Windows machines, but I couldn't find one to > handle our CentOS servers. I have done something via scp/sftp > in the past, which *seemed* to work, but if there's a better way > I'm more than interested in hearing the process. > > Thanks! > ScottYou can use a free tool called "VMware Converter", available here: http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/ -- Timothy Selivanow <timothys at easystreet.com> Linux System Administrator EasyStreet Online Services, Inc. http://www.easystreet.com