Hello experts,
are planning to virtualize an existing SBS 2011 Standard installation currently running on bare metal on a x3400 M3 Server from IBM.
We will use the commercial version of VMware ESXi 5 bare metal Hypervisor.
IBM x3400 M3 Server hardware will be upgraded to have plenty of memory and an adequate disk subsystem performance. Our plan is to run initially run the converted VM on a helper VMware ESXi 5 host, test extensively before repurposing the IBM x3400 M3 Server as virtualization host and finally move the converted VM back to the IBM x3400 M3 host.
So far I have successfully managed to perform many cold/hot P2V conversions of Windows 200x (primarily using VMware vCenter Converter and Quest/Vizioncore vConverter), however this will be my first P2V conversion of Windows SBS installation and I have the feeling that if not carefully planned it can be a nightmare and that the software used during the P2V conversion should be as much as possible aware that it is P2Ving a Windows SBS installation.
Any guidance/information based on past experience to choose the right P2V conversion tool will be greatly appreciated.
At the moment I am primarily stuck on VMware vCenter Converter and Backup Exec System Recovery 2011, however I am also looking at Double-Take Move (a no-downtime migration is not a requirement, however I really like its approach for a real-time physical server to virtual migration and its a 1-time migration license).
Thanks and Regards,
Massimiliano
