Lessons learnt while P2Ving Servers

I'm in the process of P2Ving some legacy servers to reduce rack space and thought I'd document the issues/errors/recommendations that I've encountered while doing it.

Recommendation: Document at least the following details before performing a cold clone of a physical server;

1. Local Admin password (Reset if required)
2. Current NIC Speed/Duplex
3. IP Address, Subnet Mask & Default Gateway
4. All drive space usage, add ~50% when resizing for the VM
5. Disable the connect to network so that the VM doesn't knock the physical server off when it comes up initially

Recommendation: Try and use a Gigabit network connection for the source server that you're converting, it'll save a lot of time.

Recommendation: I've found that I can monitor the Host's network usage in vCenter to give an indication of the status of the conversion. If there's network activity above the normal trends then the server is receiving information from the P2V process.


Issue: Stuck at 2% progress with the log displaying "Formatting target volume c:..."

Resolution: Change Speed and Duplex of the NIC to 'Auto' if not already configured that way or if at 'Auto' change to a compatible speed.