[BozemanLUG] Creating a VM of a Fedora box

[Brian Vincent]

Yeah, that was actually similar to something I was thinking of doing.  

What I'm really trying to avoid doing is migrating our software to a newer platform.  This was an old personal box I took to work years ago.  One day we needed a Linux box and it was there.  So, we threw a piece of software called OCS on that we use for automated asset tracking.  It's been about three years and we've done a fair amount of customization to it.  It'd be a real pain to try to migrate, though some day we'll probably have to do it.  So yes, CentOS would definitely have been better in the beginning, but we never expected to be using it three years later.  Stupid Linux, it just sits in the corner and works so well we don't ever have to invest time in it.

Oh, and I just realized it's actually fc7..

-------------
Brian Vincent
Moonlight Basin Technology
bvincent at moonlightbasin.com



-----Original Message-----
From: discuss-bounces at bozemanlug.org on behalf of Scott Dowdle
Sent: Fri 5/28/2010 7:43 PM
To: Bozeman Linux Users Group
Subject: Re: [BozemanLUG] Creating a VM of a Fedora box
 
Brian,

----- Original Message -----
> Creating a VM of a Fedora box
> 
> We've got a physical server running Fedora (core 9? can't remember)
> and we want to convert it into a VM to run on a VMWare ESXi 4.0
> server. Normally we just load up VMWare Converter, convert, and import
> but that's not working so well on this box. Now, this is the first
> time I've used VMWare Converter 4.0 so there's some differences there.
> 
> First off, running vmware-converter-client, it says to make an image
> of a physical machine you have to connect to the machine as if it were
> remote. Ok.. I can specify the "remote" machine ok under Step 1:
> Specify Source, and if I choose to "View Source Details" it properly
> sees the physical machine. The in Step 2: Specify Destination it only
> allows for a Destination Type: of VMWare Infrastructure virtual
> machine, which is not what I think I want - I need to be able specify
> a file.
> 
> How does everyone else get their physical Linux servers onto ESXi?

I didn't know that VMware's converter tool could be used on Linux physical machines.  I haven't really looked for any P2V tools.  I don't have an easy answer for you but this is what I used in my labs for P2P before I found a good disk imaging tool:

1) Do a minimal install on the target machine (in your case a VM)

2) Do an rsync of the source machine on top of the target machine.  You can selectively exclude files that you know will break the destination (like /etc/fstab, network config files, grub.conf, and maybe the /boot dir)

3) If you didn't break the boot setup it should just work.  If so, then you can boot from the install media in rescue mode and hopefully fix the boot process.

That might be a sloppy way to do it, but it should work.

Given your specifics, I'd say make a new VM and migrate the data and service configs.  Why?  Because Fedora 9 is ancient now and EOLed some time ago.  I don't recommend Fedora for anything other than desktops or development... and not servers given its rapid devel cycle and short support cycle.  For servers I prefer either RHEL or CentOS.  They are a lot like Fedora (Fedora is actually their upstream) but supported for much, much longer.  I'm guessing you already knew that.

Last time I was looking for Linux P2V tools was a couple of years ago and I didn't find anything worth a darn.  I wonder what is available now.

Red Hat Summit has a nice talk on V2V migration tools scheduled.  That should be pretty interesting... and I'm guessing a lot of the principles should also apply to P2V and V2P.

TYL,
-- 
Scott Dowdle
704 Church Street
Belgrade, MT 59714
(406)388-0827 [home]
(406)994-3931 [work]
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