Physical-to-Virtual

In computing, a physical-to-virtual (abbreviated P2V or p-to-v) migration is the process of moving a physical server's operating system (OS), applications, and data to a virtual machine hosted on a virtualized platform. Methods of P2V migration Manual P2V User manually creates a virtual machine in a virtual host environment and copies all the files from OS, applications and data from the source machine. Semi-automated P2V Performing a P2V migration using a tool that assists the user in moving the servers from physical state to virtual machine. Microsoft's Virtual Server 2005 Migration Toolkit, HOWTO: Guideline for use Virtual Server Migration ToolKit (KB555306) VMware provides a semi-automated tool called VMware vCenter Converter for moving physical servers running Windows or Linux into virtual environments while they are powered on. VMware vCenter Converter replaces two older utilities: Importer (bundled with VMware Workstation) and P2V Assistant. Oracle's Virtual Box has a Linux-based tool which allows the conversion of a dd image of an existing hard drive Microsoft provides the SysInternals disk2vhd utility for making images from Windows XP or later systems to be used with Windo