Creating Virtual Servers from Physical Servers

Tuesday, 04 January 2005 by Michel Roth

When you need to implement a (significant) change on your (terminal) server, you might want to consider doing this on a test system that has the exact same software configuration as the production system.

Using virtual servers is a great way to create such a test environment. You can for example use VMware virtualisation products or Microsoft virtualisation products. Exactly duplicating your production systems by hand can however be a sheer impossible task. Both companies provide in tools that help you create virtual machines for physical machines.

VMware provides a tool called VMware P2V Assistant 2 which transforms an image of an existing physical system into a VMware virtual machine.

Microsoft provides in the Virtual Server 2005 Migration Toolkit that simplifies the migration of an operating system and installed applications from a physical server to a server running within a virtual machine that is provided and managed by Virtual Server 2005.

Click here to view a demonstration (video files) on how to an NT4 server into Microsoft Virtual Server 2005. (source: bink.nu)