Performing Physical to Virtual (P2V) Conversions using VMM 2008

Virtual Machine Manager (VMM) 2008 includes a feature which allows the operating system from a physical computer to be converted to run inside a virtual machine. This is a concept referred to as a physical to virtual or P2V conversion. Conversions can be performed a number of different Microsoft Windows based operating systems, details of which will be provided later in this chapter. In addition, two forms of conversion (online and offline) are available. Whether or not each conversion type is available depends on the operating system running on the source computer.

Online and Offline P2V Conversions

An online P2V conversion use the Volume Shadow Copy Services to perform the conversion while the source computer system is still running, enabling a conversion to take place without any interruption of service. An offline P2V conversion involves restarting the source computer system using the Windows Preinstallation Environment (PE) environment, resulting in a temporary loss of service from the source computer during the conversion process.

Supported Source Operating Systems

A P2V conversion can only be performed on a limited range of Microsoft Windows editions. Further, P2V online conversions are limited to an even smaller subset of Windows editions as illustrated in the the following table:

Operating System	Online P2V	Offline P2V
Windows Server 2008 (32-bit)	Yes	Yes
Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V (64-bit)	Yes	Yes
Windows Server 2008 without Hyper-V	Yes	Yes
Windows Server 2003 (32-bit) SP1 or later	Yes	Yes
Windows Server 2003 (64-bit) SP1 or later	Yes	Yes
Windows 2000 Server SP4 or later (Offline P2V only)	No	Yes
Windows 2000 Advanced Server SP4 or later (Offline P2V only)	No	Yes
Windows XP Professional (32-bit) SP2 or later	Yes	Yes
Windows XP Professional (64-bit) SP2 or later	Yes	Yes
Windows Vista (32-bit) SP1 or later	Yes	Yes
Windows Vista (64-bit) SP1 or later	Yes	Yes