Re: [Xen-users] Existing windows server to XEN howto?

[Andrew Lyon <andrew.lyon@xxxxxxxxx>]

On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 1:22 PM, Fajar A. Nugraha <fajar@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On Mon, Jan 4, 2010 at 8:18 PM, Mr Gabriel <gabriel@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>> I would like to move an existing W2K3 install onto my new super duper xen
>> box -- Installing linux based machine is no issue, it's the windows ones
>> that keep getting me. I have Acronis which we usually use for bare metal
>> restores, and it seems that bare metal restores don't want to work too well
>> with XEN, any assistance/help/ideas ?
>
> Whatever restore method you normally use should work, as long as:
> - you enabled acpi, apic, and pae on domU config file
> - your windows installation has IDE drivers installed (see
> http://www.virtualbox.org/wiki/Migrate_Windows . Not sure if it'd work
> for W2K3 as well though).
>
> --
> Fajar

I have successfully migrated several physical windows 2003 installs to
Xen by adding the ide drivers as per
http://support.microsoft.com/kb/314082 and then using Acronis True
Image to copy the disks.

One issue I had was that the boot cd created by the version of True
Image we have did not boot under Xen (hung on boot screen), but
Acronis support sent me a version that did work
(TrueImageLinuxServer8072_multiparam_Standard_english_il.iso). However
due to using emulated nic and hd running True Image directly under Xen
was very slow, my first solution to that problem was to make a small
windows hvm install with gplpv drivers loaded and true image installed
and then temporarily add the target block device to it in order to
write the image, but I recently switched to using a WinPE boot ISO
with GPLPV and TrueImage/Backup And Recovery installed, the Acronis
products come with a WinPE/BartPE Image builder utility so its quite
easy to do.

Also watch out for boot.ini, many servers come with a hidden partition
on the boot volume for running diagnostics, in which case windows may
be booting from the second partition, so you may need to adjust the
boot.ini or you could remove it entirely and windows will then attempt
to boot from \windows automatically.

Andy

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