Migrate Apps on the Fly

Sick of your old, sluggish server but too scared of carrying out tedious configuration and data migration tasks on a new setup? We show an easier way

Sunday, February 04, 2007

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Imagine this-you have 50 different mid-sized servers to perform varied roles such as mailing, protection against spam, acting as a firewall, ADS, and so on. But your IT bosses have decided for an immediate consolidation of resources and have ordered a migration of these servers into 10 high-end servers. To do so, let's suppose you decide to take the virtualization way. For this you would need to create create 5 virtual machines in each of the 10 high-end servers and migrate the services on top of them.

But this means that you need to reinstall the OS in each of the 50 virtual machines and deploy and configure the services on top of them. This in turn means spending sleepless nights in office. One way out of this would be to convert your existing hard disks to VM HDDs with just three or four mouse clicks. This will make sure that all your installation, configuration and user data is intact in that VM HDD, without requiring any migration or reinstallation. Sounds interesting? To make this possible, we are going to use a software called WinImage to capture system images and host them on MS Virtual Server.

Installation
First of all we need WinImage, which is available as a fully functional 30-day shareware. You can download it from www.winimage.com/download.htm. Make sure that you are downloading the latest version of the application (currently 8.0), as older versions of WinImage don't have this feature. After it is downloaded, run the installer and follow the installation wizard. All you have to do is to click the next button until the application is installed on your machine.

Creating image
Take the hard-disk of the machine you want to create the VM Image of and connect it as a secondary hard-disk to the machine where you've installed WinImage 8.0. Now, run WinImage80.exe to start the interface. Go to Disks Menu and click on the Option that says 'Create Virtual Disk Image from Physical Disk...' This opens a new window.

Earlier, you migrated data while shifting servers. However, using WinImage you can directly capture the old OS and use it on top of a virtual environment or migrate it to a new server

Selecting HDD
In the window click on the check box which says 'Include Non-removable Hard disk also.' This will show all hard disks connected to the machine. Now select the hard disk whose image you want to create. Most likely the name of the hard disk will be 'Disk 1,' if it is connected as the secondary hard disk. There is one more configuration required in this window. While creating the virtual disk image, you have two different options. One is to create a fixed disk in which the size of the virtual disk will be fixed and equal to the size of the physical disk. The other one is to create a virtual disk which of the same size as the used space in the physical disk. In this case, the disk will be Dynamic Expandable and will increase with the increase in data.

Select the disk you want to create an image for. You can also choose whether to create a fixed or expanding disk

The second option is useful if you have a good amount of disk space in the Virtual Server. You can set this option by selecting the radio button at the bottom of this window. Next, it will ask you to provide a path where you want to save the created image. Creation of the Virtual Disk will take a good amount of time which can vary from 10 minutes to an hour depending on the size of the physical disk you are converting.

Attaching a virtual disk
Now go to the Virtual Server Management console. Click on 'Create' under the Virtual Machine Menu. This will open a page where you have to provide the name of the VM, RAM and HDD details. Here, provide values for each except the HDD. Now go to the 'Virtual Hard Disk' option and select the second option which says 'Use an existing Virtual Hard disk' and fill in the UNC path of the virtual hard disk which you have just created in the 'File name (.vhd)' box.

Now click on 'Create' and you are through with it. Start the VM by going to the Master Status and clicking on the virtual machine. But while booting it for the first time, remember that the OS will stop and configure all new devices. Be careful at this stage and follow all driver installation procedures. It shouldn't be a big problem as most of the Windows and Linux based Oses detect all the MSVS hardware quite easily.

Select the second option in the 'Virtual hard disk' section and provide the path of the disk

Migrating to a new server
Using WinImage, you can totally eliminate the need of a Virtual Server and still migrate the existing hard disk Image to a new server. To do so follow the instructions till Step 3.

When the VHD file is created, remove the hard-disk where you have created the image and instead place the new hard disk where you want to transfer the content of the first disk. Go to 'Options' menu and select the option which says 'Restore Virtual Hard Disk Image to a physical disk.' A new window will open. Select the appropriate disk in the window and click on OK.

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