How to convert a physical server into a Hyper-V virtual machine

Question

Let me explain my scenario.

I have a physical server (Supermicro 6015v-M3) with raid controller set to raid 1 and two disks, with Windows 2012 installed. One of the two drives is faulty.

What I am trying to do is convert the physical server to a virtual machine and run the vm on a different server running Windows 2012 R2 standard with Hyper-V

I thought the simplest solution was to use disk2vhd to create the vhd image, but I tried few times and everytime it stop when it reach 100%, and hang; I waited 10 hours before to kill the process.

Looking on forums I found people getting same result from disk2vhd when trying to use it with a hd with corrupted files; so I suspect the faulty drive has something to do with disk2vhd behavior, even if in my case there is no corrupt files... The other RAID disk is healthy (so far).

Now I am trying to find alternative ways to create a Hyper-V VM from that physical server, but so far I found reference to only two ways: 1) disk2vhd, which is currently not working for me, or 2) Windows System Center, which I don't have because I have Windows 2012 R2 standard licenses only.

Is there anything else I can try?

Solution

Try that: Ignore anything but the system partition in P2V. No joke. Then, once done, macke a backup of the other partitions.

On the new virtual server (which only has the boot partition as physical disc).... then restore the backup.

Comments

[Max Favilli]

Thanks Tom, I am trying that. Do I have to backup only c: volume or also system state?

[TomTom]

I am sorry but out of respect of the rules of this website i do not answer questions that any beginner admin should know.

[Vick Vega]

@MaxFavilli Yes, both.

[Max Favilli]

I will try this next week, I have to migrate few VM from vmware to W2k12R2, thanks.