After failed with my first attempt today and with meticulous preparations, finally I managed to P2V one of MS cluster machine running Exchange 2003 without much hassle. Since we already know how intricate Exchange is, there are few things we need to be careful before we decide to P2V this cluster box but below are the list of steps which proven and works for my second attempt :

Objective :

• P2V 2x physical Windows Cluster Box running Exchange 2003 to 2x ESX host (ESX4.0U1)

Cluster Setup :

• Clustering VMs on one Physical Host
• Clustering VMs Across Physical Hosts
• Clustering Physical and VMs

If you refer to VMware documents (vi3_301_201_mscs), each cluster setup will require a different configuration on the VMs setting. In my case, I should setup the VMs for “Clustering VMs across physical hosts” though I forgot, before I’m going to have 2x VMs across 2x ESX hosts, I will only manage to P2V the VMs one by one. Failed to identify this caused me trouble to bring up the first VM after P2Ved it due to quorum disk scsi reservation issue. So, once I followed the “Clustering Physical and VMs” instead “Clustering VMs across physical hosts” setup the problem solved.

P2V Migration Method

• Hot Cloning
• Cold Cloning

Deep in my heart keep pushing me to choose Hot Cloning because of the challenges I will face over Cold Cloning. However, since this is my first time to P2V MS Cluster & Exchange box, I determined to migrate the box via vCenter bootable CD (4.1.1).

Pre-Migration

Nothing much need to be done, except I make sure both machines in good state. Just assume one of the box out of sudden got power failure. I cannot do anything, cannot properly shutdown the machine & etc. Once I down the machine I did present all LUN inclusive quorum & exchange logs and data disk to one target ESX host. So the summary : Read more