Converting Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 Virtual Machines to VMware

We just converted 3 of our virtual machines running on Virtual  Server 2005 R2 to VMware ESXi yesterday and it went pretty smoothly with just a couple of minor issues.

The first issue is the mouse cursor not working in VMware console after installing the VMware tools.  The fix is just a simple registry edit:

1. Open Registry Editor (regedit)
2. Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Contro l\Class\{4D36E96F-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}
3. Double-click on UpperFilters and delete msvmmouf.
4. Reboot the VM.

Source: http://www.petri.co.il/forums/archive/index.php/t-19387.html

The second minor issue is when you try to set the static IP address to the same IP address before it was converted, you might receive a message similar to this:

The IP address XXX.XXX.XXX.XXX you have entered for this network adapter is already assigned to another adapter Name of adapter. Name of adapter is hidden from the network and Dial-up Connections folder because it is not physically in the computer or is a legacy adapter that is not working. If the same address is assigned to both adapters and they become active, only one of them will use this address. This may result in incorrect system configuration. Do you want to enter a different IP address for this adapter in the list of IP addresses in the advanced dialog box?

This is probably not a big deal, but if it bothers you just do the following:

1. Click Start, click Run, type cmd.exe, and then press ENTER.
2. Type set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1, and then press ENTER.
3. Type Start DEVMGMT.MSC, and then press ENTER.
4. Click View, and then click Show Hidden Devices.
5. Expand the Network Adapters tree.
6. Right-click the dimmed network adapter, and then click Uninstall.

Source: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/269155

VMware ESXi First Impressions

I finally got a chance to try this out yesterday on a Dell PowerEdge 6600 server that we use for testing at work.  I’ve been testing it pretty much most of yesterday and today and I have to say that I’m very impressed with it so far.

Installation was very easy: download and burn the ISO image, boot from it, follow the installation instructions on the screen (which is pretty much next, next next), set the root password, and set a static IP address if you want.

To manage it, open your web browser, point it to the IP address of the ESXi server, download the free VMware Infrastructure Client from there and install it on your computer.  You pretty much do everything here: creating and managing virtual machines, data stores, upload/download files, resource allocation, etc.

VMware also has a very cool free tool called VMware Converter for converting physical machines, backup images, and other virtual machine formats (such as Microsoft Virtual Server 2005) to VMware virtual machines.  You can run this while the machine you’re converting is running and you can even convert the machines directly to the VMware ESXi server! Very cool!

So far I’ve converted a virtual machine created by VMware Server and our physical desktop deployment server (BDD 2007) and they both converted successfully with no problems.

I’ll be doing more testing this week and we’re most likely going to be moving our production servers running on Microsoft Virtual Server 2005 R2 and other physical servers to VMware ESXi.  It’s pretty much a no-brainer, especially since ESXi is now free.

VMware ESXi

I just found out last night that VMware ESXi, VMware’s bare metal hypervisor, is now available for free.  I got really excited and wanted to try it out right away so I decided to use my Lenovo ThinkPad X60s laptop as a test machine.  I backed up all my files last night so I can play around with ESXi on it today.

So I installed it from the bootable CD which seem to have installed fine, but when I tried to change the network settings I keep getting the “Restore Network Factory Settings” screen.  It turned out that my onboard NIC is not supported .

Oh well, I guess I’ll have to wait until Tuesday when I get back to work to test it out on our test server (which is in the Hardware Compatibility List so that one shouldn’t have issues).