Move Physical Windows Server 2008 into a Hyper-V VM - windows-server-2008

I'd like to import a real Windows Server 2008 server as a Hyper-V Virtual Server on another Windows Server 2008 instance.
Anyone have any idea how to do this?
I'm looking at the System Center Virtual Machine Manager 2008 but it doesn't seem to import Windows Server 2008 - nor is it free.
Is there some other workaround (i.e. import the image into VMWare first, then convert to Hyper-V)?
Please help.
Regards,
Randall

while testing disaster recovery, iwas pleasantly surprised
(and impressed) that the builtin windows server backup
restored to hyper-v without a hitch.
this was on production hardware, with hw raid 5 and such -
so i expect it would work with slightly less exotic stuff as well.

I know from personal experience that using VMware's converter works to take an image of the system. You can then use Hyper V to import the VMware image you created.
When I was testing the the beta version of Hyper-V this was the only reliable method I found to import a physical system into a Hyper-V environment.
It's seems crazy to doubled convert something, but it worked!

Related

Why do you need a Hyper-V?

Ok, I know what is basically a Hyper-V is.
Simple, a virtual machine. Well, good for testing application and development usage.
Ok, so far so good for the understanding. and here the main question:
Why do you need to install servers in a Hyper-V on a real server?
Isn't that running a server os on the real machine is somehow better performance than running it in a virtual environment?
for example, database server. Install it in a virtual machine? why not on the real machine?
One example of its use would be to create the perfect developer environment if you want to run many different versions of SQL Server on the same physical box.
SQL Server 2005 isn't compatible with Windows 10 so a virtual server running Windows 2003 is better to house it. Windows 2008 for SQL Server 2008 and so on.
This also gives you the flexibility to allocate resources to different VMs and prioritise RAM to the instance that your currently developing against. Giving you server level options with client tools running on the host OS as intended.
Check out this blog post on setting up such a dev environment.
http://www.purplefrogsystems.com/paul/2016/05/using-hyper-v-and-powershell-to-create-the-perfect-developer-workstation/

Free option for virtual SQL Server

I am working on an application in my free time and I want to use a SQL Server database. I have the .iso for SQL Server 2008 R2 Developer but I don't have an extra computer to dedicate as a server. I assumed I could use VMware Player for a virtual server but from what I've read it seems that I would need VMware vCenter or another paid version.
Is there a free option for creating a SQL Server database virtually? This will be extremely small scale (3 tables and just for my personal use) so I am not worried about performance at all.
You can install that locally on your computer. There is no need for a virtual engine. Even if some of the MS documents say you need a server operating system, that is not the case. The setup has a check for valid operating system, and it just installs fine on Windows XP, Vista, 7 in my experience.
But if you want, VMWare Player would also work. In contrast to its name, you can also create virtual engines with it - but with some limitations.
And for a really small solution, even SQL Server Express, which is also free, would do. If I remeber correctly, the main restriction is that the data may not exceed 1 TB.
SQL Server can run locally without any problems, even in your dev/gaming/browsing computer without creating too much interference. There is no problem in installing it for testing and even for production of small systems (the express edition is free and valid for those uses).
Another, even slimmer, alternative, if you dare to upgrade to SQL 2012, would be to use a new feature called LocalDB. It's basically the very same db engine with a very important difference: it does NOT run as a service, but instead it's a regular program that is automatically started when a connection is attempted. Advantages would be that it does not consume resources until it's needed and yet you've got almost the full feature set of the real server. Here is an introduction on it. While I've never used it (always with the full express version), it seems good for the kind of programs you want to develop.

Hyper-V Server 2012 vs Windows Server 2012 Standard

I'm looking to test some of the new features in Hyper-V 2012 (v3).
Hyper-V v3 can be downloaded as a "free" version "Hyper-V Server 2012", or it can be purchased as part of Windows Server 2012 Standard or datacenter. However, as usual licensing is unclear.
On the one hand MS talk about their free edition in several (many) sites. On the other hand, when you go to the actual download site it talks about a trial. To me a trial has an expiry date so it makes me nervous.
I could use my Windows Standard 2012 license as part of my Microsoft Action Pack Subscription (MAPS), but I'm not sure what I'm actually entitled to.
So my question is:
What are the real differences between the free (trial) download of Hyper-V Server 2012 and the paid-for Windows Server Core 2012 where you have to install with a key.
Does the "trial" version actually expire?
No, Hyper-V Server 2012 doesn't expire.
Hyper-V Server is quite a bit like Server Standard Core with all of the roles except Hyper-V (and other supporting roles and features) removed.
Now, in Server 2012, you can add the full UI back to the Server Core editions, but that's not an option with Hyper-V Server 2012 - it will always just be a command-line. That also means that the typical management UI tools won't run on Hyper-V Server 2012, so you'll need a machine that you can manage it from remotely (the PowerShell cmdlets for Hyper-V actually do work on Hyper-V Server, though).
Hyper-V Server isn't really for people who want to "play around" with Hyper-V - it's really designed for people who want to boost their Hyper-V infrastructure with more physical hosts, and who want to run a very lightweight OS in the root partition, leaving the most resources available for the VMs.
If you just want to get used to Hyper-V or test some things out with it, but you don't have experience with managing Hyper-V remotely already, stick with a full version of Windows Server (or Windows 8 Pro/Enterprise x64, which also have Hyper-V).

Disk2vhd Hyper-V server question

Hello all I have a backed up about 30 servers using disk2vhd and now I have built my first of many hyper-v severs I did not realize this is all command line I did download CoreConfigurator and that does have some functionality I have been looking for. My question is how do I get the VHD files to run a Vitual Machines? its all command line I tried via vbs to mount the VHD's and I have not been able to any help on this would be great!
Thanks!
If you are using servercore, You maybe can do everything from the command line but I always prefer to have one computer running a Non server core version of windows 2008 to be the management server. You will load up Hyper-V manager on the non server core box and manage your Hyper-V server.
To have no "management" servers or desktops on your network will be a big pain IMO for management.
Using Hyper-V Manager you can quickly load the VHD's as VM's.
So load up Hyper-V Manager on a desktop PC on your localnet, and use its connect option to connect to your servercore. (Make sure your firewall settings are ok on servercore using coreconfig)

Should I upgrade to Windows Server & Exchange 2008?

Currently running Server 2003 but am looking at reinstalling in the near future due to a change of direction with the domains. Should I take this opportunity to install Windows Server 2008 instead?
I would love to play with new technology and the server is only for a small home business so downtime/performance issues aren't really a concern.
I am no expert on Windows server revisions, but the only new feature of Server 2008 I can think of is Hyper-V. But I would try Server 2008 just for Hyper-V, as this VM hypervisor is supposedly much faster than VMware and Virtual PC, and is compatible with Virtual PC virtual disks.
One rule that has served me very well over the years is: Do not upgrade infrastructure components just for the sake of upgrading. If it works well, leave it be. You mentioned that some downtime isn't a big deal, but if the server is actually used then there is a chance it can become a big deal unexpectedly. Why not simply get (or build) a new machine and play with the new operating system there? That way you get the best of both worlds.
There is no Exchange Server 2008. Exchange has always been tightly integrated with IIS which tends to bind it to a specific version of Windows. However, Exchange Server 2007 SP1 can be installed on Windows Server 2008.
Exchange Server 2003, however, cannot run on Windows Server 2008 and I do not believe there are any plans to do so in a future service pack.
Note that Exchange Server 2007 requires x64 architecture, running the 64-bit OS, on a production system. The days of booting /3GB are past - it simply does not provide enough virtual address space for current large databases. Exchange's long-running virtual memory fragmentation problem has not been fixed, it has just been given more virtual address space to work in.