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“Poor Man’s Replication of a Physical or Virtual machine to a VMware vSphere Hypervisor Host (ESXi) for FREE”
I have already written three articles on the use of VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.x.
VMware vCenter Converter Standalone primary function is to create physical to virtual copies or conversions of physical computers, we often abbreviate this to P2V. VMware vCenter Converter Standalone can also be used on computers that have already been converted to virtual computers, or virtual computers that already exist in a “Cloud Space”, so we can create copies or conversions of an existing virtual computer, we often abbreviate this to V2V
VMware vCenter Converter Standalone is an excellent FREE software tool for creating P2Vs or V2Vs, but there is another often “hidden function” which is rarely used by VMware Administrators. The function is called Synchronize. This function can be used to Synchronize changes between a physical or virtual computer, which has already been P2Ved (V2Ved) to another virtual machine on another VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) host. The same function can be used, to help unattended “cut over times” when completing a P2V (V2V) in Production, you could create the original P2V (V2V) at 9.00am, and then using synchronize, finally sync all changes made during the day, and “cut over” to the virtual machine out of hours, at 23.00pm.
Some of our clients use this software and function, as a free alternative to replication to a second DR site and ESXi host. The ESXi host could be using the FREE VMware vSphere Hypervisor.
In this article, I’ll show you HOW TO: Synchronize changes when completing a P2V or V2V with VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.1. In the example below I’ll be using a virtual machine, creating a V2V and then synchronizing additional changes made to the source virtual machine to the destination VM (our DR copy).
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Install VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.1
Install VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.1 on the computer to be synchronized. In this example, I will be installing VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.1 on the virtual machine.
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Creating a P2V (V2V in this example) for synchronization
Select source type: Powered-on-machine
Specify the powered-on machine: This local machine
followed by Next to continue, converter will identify the source machine.
Enter the destination server, username and password, in this example, I’m using our VMware vSphere vCenter server details, but if you wanted to synchronize/replicate to a standalone VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) host, you would enter the VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) host details here, e.g. root username and password.
To enable the Synchronize function, you MUST select Edit
If you wanted to perform, a Scheduled Synchronize, select and set the Schedule Option. Select Next to continue, review the Summary screen, and select Finish.
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Synchronize Changes
Once the initial P2V (V2V) conversion has completed, or “seeded” a new virtual machine, you can use the Synchronize function to replicate any changes that occur on the source machine to the virtual machine, the source machine could be a physical or virtual machine. (You can check the virtual machine by disconnecting networking, and powering up the virtual machine).
Congratulations you have successfully created a P2V (V2V) and Synchronized (replicated) your machine to a virtual machine.
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