import physical debian into VMWARE (ESX) server as a vServer

['chris']

hi

howto import physical debian ETCH stable into VMWARE (ESX 3.5)
as a virtual server (vServer) using VMware Converter ?
if I try to convert with the VMware Converter, then I'm getting an error
the system might be down or firewalled, but it isn't down or firewalled.
what's wrong and which ports should be opened on debian
to install an agent remotely ?

kind regards
chris

[Heironimus]

Doesn't VMware Converter only run for Windows guests? I think it would be pretty worthless for anything else anyway because the main hard work it does is changing the Windows boot device driver, which is either easy or unnecessary on most other platforms.

[Matti_Kurkela]

I seem to recall that the VMware Converter was also available in the form of a bootable CD.

If my memory is correct, the (only?) supported way to convert a Linux machine is to boot the system using the Converter CD, point it to the VMware server and let it duplicate the system into a new vServer.

MK

[Nuwan Alwis]

You are 100% Correct Heironimus, Up to now Vmware supports windows live migrations only. So any linux distro is helpless. So far i haven't tried any offline tools that does this.But i have heard that HP Server Migration Kit has some ability to do such a thing(This is also on prolant servers i guess). Any way i think vm converter can convert 3rd party system images such as symantec BackupExec. So only thing comes to my mind is give it a try getting image of that deb and pass it to converter and see.
Good Luck!

[Heironimus]

It's actually quite trivial to migrate Linux machines in to VMware by hand, or to write your own site-specific scripts. I think so far my record is under 5 minutes downtime. Boot a VM with a Knoppix CD, copy filesystems over the network, update fstab, update modprobe.conf (or equivalent), update initrd, update grub config and install to MBR.