Physical to virtual conversions?

Question

Can I really do this?

As I am reading up on virtualization, I am getting more excited. The latest thing I am realizing, that it may actually be possible to take my existing XP Pro development workstation(VS 2005/vs2008/sql server etc) and simply convert the entire installation to a virtual image and load onto my new box? Sounds to good to be true? Does it really work that easy? If I can take a complete "dump" of a machine and simply move it onto my new workstation, not even need to find all my old install disks, that is truly amazing.

Does one of the VM products support this better than others? that may tip the scales for me to pick one platform over another..

How is it that I have not gotten onto this VM bandwagon sooner!?

Edit/Update: Just as a quick update in case anyone is interest. Got the machine, decided to go with vmware and had a heck of a battle, first trying to figure out which product to use, and then actually getting anything to work. The instructions are not obvious and wasted my 6 hours trying to a) get a vmware working, and b) actually trying to do a conversion of my old XP machine into a VM - never got it working. In frustration I downloaded MS Virtual PC in minutes, had it up and running in 5 minutes, and was creating VM's within the hour....VERY easy. I haven't however figured out how to convert my old XP machine into a VM - but, now having a VM running, it seems obvious to me that I wouldn't want to actually run a primary development setup in my VW window anyway.

Answer 1

VMWare has p2v. By far the easiest solution you could take, and it's pretty easy to convert the VMDK into a VHD if you want to use a different solution.

Answer 2

Definitely VMware Converter http://www.vmware.com/products/converter/

VMware Workstation is the most user friendly and fully-featured app that I've used and is well suited for debugging. Check out an awesome video demo of the record/replay feature over at http://is.gd/eJOe

Answer 3

Three options I have used.

1) Vmware convertor will create an image for you you can move around forever. You can then run it for free in the VMWare player.

I think the easiest thing would be to connect an external drive to your computer, convert a computer into an image onto that drive, plug the drive into another machine, and try it out..

2) Ghost is ghost.. You can use something like norton ghost or a linux equivalent to mirror the drive onto a larger one. If you have driver issues you can do an inplace re-install over the existing xp install and it will replace the drivers and leave all your applications, data, and settings intact.

3) Go Mac. They're strange. You can link two macs up with a firewire cord and it will copy over your entire setup, including virtual machines. I have my laptop backed up and if it dies, I can transfer the identical computer onto another one in minutes as all the internal components in Apple are intel and the drivers are one and the same.

Options I've heard of:

4) Microsoft Virtual PC. A fourth option that I have been hearing good things about is Microsoft Virtual PC. They bought the technology from another company and

5) Citrix - This one is intriguing because it would conceivably work as well, if not better than VMware. At least that's what I hear from my Citrix friend.

Answer 4

Welcome to the club of virtualisation. I set up a virtual machine on my Vista Os and running xp simultaneously. Its great as some apps don't work in 64bit (ie. those old 16bit apps.). You can try Microsoft Virtual PC 2007 its most probably the most user friendly. It's what I use. You can try Virtualbox too. You can set up a partition and allocate space to the new operating system for this to work. Or use a spare formatted secondary drive if you have one.

Best of luck!

Answer 5

We now do all development in VM's.

The desktops are locked down tight and out IT manager is happy.

We use VirtualBox and it's fine.

There are fairly clear instruction for using physical disks directly for VirtualBox anyway. The P->V transofer is not terribly hard.

Can't say the same of MS VPC or VMWare.