During a P2V conversion, disk images of the hard disks on the source computer are copied and formatted as virtual hard disks (.vhd files) for use in the new virtual machine.

For more information on which physical computers you can and should convert, see:

To create a virtual machine from a physical server
  1. In the Virtual Machine Manager Administrator Console, in the Actions pane in any view, click Convert physical server to open the Convert Physical Server Wizard.

  2. On the Select Source page, configure the following options:

    1. Computer name or IP address. Type the computer name or IP address of the physical server that you want to use as the source for the new virtual machine or click Browse to locate the server.

    2. User name. Type the name of a user account that has local Administrator permissions on the source machine.

    3. Password. Type the user password.

    4. Domain or computer name. If the domain name field is not already pre-populated, type the name of the domain. If the physical source computer is not a member of a domain, type the computer name or IP address in this field.

  3. On the Virtual Machine Identity page, configure the following options:

    1. Virtual machine name. Accept the pre-populated virtual machine name, which is the same computer name as the name of the source physical server. Alternatively, you can type a different name.

    2. Owner. Accept the pre-populated value, DomainName\Username, to identify yourself as the owner of the new virtual machine. Alternatively, click Select to specify a different user or group as the owner. The account specified must be an Active Directory account.

    3. Description (optional). Type a description for the new virtual machine.

  4. On the System Information page, click Scan System to begin a survey of the source machine that lists its hardware and software and identifies any missing components that are required for the P2V conversion. The wizard installs software on the source machine to gather the information but removes this software when the conversion is complete.

    Note
    If a firewall is installed on the source machine, a firewall exception will be created for remote administration (RemoteAdmin service). This exception is automatically removed after the conversion operation is complete.

    On the System Information tab, you can review the resulting information, such as operating system version, hard drives, and network adapters.

  5. On the Volume Configuration page, review the lists of all volumes that the wizard lists and determine whether you want to make any changes:

    Select volumes to copy. Initially, all volumes appear in the results pane and are selected for duplication to the new virtual machine. The new virtual machine must contain the system volume and the boot volume from the source machine. For example, if the system and boot volumes are on the C: drive, the check box for the C: drive is grayed out so that you cannot clear its checkmark. You can remove other volumes if you do not want to duplicate them in the new virtual machine or if the host on which you deploy the new virtual machine does not have enough space to store all volumes.

    Adjust volume settings. You can adjust the VHD Size (MB) field to adjust the size of any volume (NTFS volumes will be automatically expanded to the size indicated), the VHD Type field to adjust the type (Dynamic or Fixed) of any volume, or the Channel field to adjust the channel (for both IDE devices and SCSI adapters) of any selected volume.

    Conversion Options. Choose between Online Conversion and Offline Conversion. Online conversions are preferable. However, if the source machine is not compatible with online conversions, then Offline Conversion will automatically be selected.

    To turn off the source physical computer after the P2V conversion, check the Turn off Source computer after conversion checkbox.

  6. On the Offline Conversion Options page, select one of the following methods to provide an IP address to the boot environment on the host:

    • Obtain an IP address automatically—Use this option to obtain an IP address through DHCP.

    • Use the following IPv6 address:—Use this option to specify the IPv6 address, subnet prefix length, and default gateway of the host. Select the MAC address of the network adapter from the Bind IP to the following physical network adapter drop-down list box.

    • Use the following IPv4 address:—Use this option to specify the IPv6 address, subnet mask, and default gateway of the host. Select the MAC address of the network adapter from the Bind IP to the following physical network adapter drop-down list box.

    These drivers enable the boot environment to properly load storage and network adapters when it starts up.

  7. On the Virtual Machine Configuration page, select the number of processors and amount of memory for the converted virtual machine.

  8. On the Select Host page, review the number of stars under Rating for each host listed under Host Name to determine the most suitable host on which to deploy this virtual machine.

    Note
    If a large number of hosts are listed, use the Host group, Look for, or Group by fields to display a smaller set of potential hosts.

    When you deploy a virtual machine on a host, all available host servers are assigned a host rating, consisting of zero through five stars, to indicate the host’s suitability for hosting the virtual machine. The host rating is based on the virtual machine's hardware and software requirements and anticipated resource usage.

    For each server listed that might be a suitable candidate as a host for this virtual machine, review the information displayed on the tabs for Details, Rating Explanation, and SAN Explanation.

    If a host has network optimization enabled, a green arrow appears in the Network Optimization column. VMM 2008 R2 allows you to take advantage of network optimization capabilities that are available on Hyper-V hosts that are running Windows Server 2008 R2. For information about network optimization and the hardware that supports it, see the Windows Server 2008 R2 documentation. After a virtual machine is deployed, this feature is displayed only for virtual machines that are deployed on a host that is running Windows Server 2008 R2.

    After reviewing the information on this page, select the host on which you want to deploy this virtual machine, and then click Next.

    Note
    If no host in the list has enough disk space to host the new virtual machine, click Previous to return to the Volume Configuration page and either clear one or more volumes or reduce the size of one or more volumes.
  9. On the Select Path page, accept the default path on the host to which to save files associated with this virtual machine, or click Browse to specify a different path. The default path is as follows:

    <C>:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Documents\Shared Virtual Machines\

    If you select a path other than the default path and want to store other virtual machines on that path, select Add this path to the list of host default paths. For information about configuring default virtual machine paths, see How to Set Placement Options for a Host.

  10. On the Select Networks page, modify the networks and attach them to Not Connected or to any of the virtual networks that are found on the selected host.

    Note
    Networks area will list each of the virtual network adapters that are currently attached to the virtual machine. Network adapters will default to None if you selected None in the hardware configuration or to the best matching virtual network according to the network matching rules.
  11. On the Additional Properties page, accept the default settings or modify these settings as described in How to Configure Automatic Start and Stop Actions for a Virtual Machine

  12. On the Conversion Information page, do one of the following:

    1. Confirm that the message No issues detected appears.

    2. Review any issues reported by the wizard that must be resolved before the conversion can continue.

    Each issue in the list explains how to resolve the issue. After resolving all issues, click Check Again to check for additional issues. When no more issues are detected, click Next to continue.

  13. On the Summary page, do the following:

    1. Review the settings that you chose by running the wizard.

    2. Optionally, click View Script to view (and copy) the Windows PowerShell script that runs this wizard and performs the conversion. All administrative tasks in VMM can be performed at the command line or scripted. For more information, see "Windows PowerShell Scripting in Virtual Machine Manager 2008" (http://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkId=110911).

    3. Optionally, accept or clear the default setting Automatically open the Jobs window to view the progress of this operation.

    4. Click Create to create the virtual machine.

  14. In Jobs view, monitor the progress of the new virtual machine creation job and confirm that the virtual machine is created successfully. If the job fails, read the error message at the bottom of the Jobs window for information about the cause of the failure and the recommended action to resolve the issue.


For the most up-to-date Help information, go to the Virtual Machine Manager 2008 Help Online. To find additional Virtual Machine Manager 2008 documentation, go to the Virtual Machine Manager 2008 TechCenter Library.