Shadow Protect IT Edition for P2V
As a VM admin I had challenges in how to P2V (Physical to Virtual) my environment into VMware hosts. I had about 900 Physical servers that needed P2V and I found just one P2V tool didn’t always do the job. Since P2Vs would commonly fail I found having multiple options were needed. I used 1) VMware Converter 2) PlateSpin, and my 3 option was Shadow Protect IT Edition. It is a product that I love to use, especially for P2V conversions.
VMware Converter generally worked well, but sometimes would fail and it took a lot of time to troubleshoot why it wasn’t working correctly. Its benefit was live conversations and compatibility with VMware.
PlateSpin was a great product and worked well. However, we had a per use license so using it for 900+ servers wasn’t very cost effective.
Using Shadow Protect IT Edition for P2V worked really well. It allowed me to backup a source system and then restore it to a target.
When using it for P2V I found the following benefits:
- The way you use Storage Craft is by making a image file of the source device then restoring it to a target device. This process has several benefits:
- You can restore the image file to just about any target. It adjusts the OS Hardware drivers to match the target device.
- This enables me to keep a point in time image file. I keep is as a backup just incase I later need it.
- If needed I can restore this image file to any hardware I choose.
- Having an image file enables easy hardware restores as sometimes the applications owner want to compare their physical system to the VM. This P2V could have been months ago so I simply get a new host, push the image, and let them compare it to the VM.
- Lastly, sometimes the Application owner questions if all files have been migrated. To solve this, I simply mount the image file and give them file level access to review and compare.
Check them out at http://www.storagecraft.com/shadow_protect_IT_edition.php
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