Problems in migrating/importing a physical machine to vmware esxi or vmware server
I’ve had this problem several times already. The symptoms are that after importing a physical machine to a virtual machine using the vmware converter software, the resulting virtual machine boot is just a black screen with a flashing cursor. The problem stems with the converter software keeping the disk controller the same (Preserve Source option) … however, when using the vSphere import, or cold converter cd, it doesn’t give an option to change the Disk Controller. The way to do it is to use the windows based VMware Converter Standalone, to convert a physical machine or an existing non-booting virtual machine. Point the converter software to your non-booting virtual machine and go through all the steps until you hit step #3 View/Edit Options . Click on EDIT next to Devices, you will then see the “Disk Controller” drop down, then change the setting from “Preserve Source” to SCSI LSI Logic. This will force the converter software to go into the virtual machine image Windows configuration and make the necessary changes from an IDE system to an SCSI LSI Logic system.
Why does this problem happen? I suspect that the converter software, when set to Preserve Source, keeps all the disk drivers intact during the conversion. However, different servers use different IDE drivers, so if it deviates from the standard IDE drivers, then the converted virtual machine chokes. Changing to a SCSI disk controller, does not mean that it is better or more reliable in the virtual machine, but instead just means that you forced the converter to change the drivers within the Windows OS to use SCSI instead of IDE, thus avoiding the non-matching IDE drivers.