How to Convert Physical Machines to Virtual Machines with VMware Converter

The VMware Converter is amazing piece of software which will:
1) Import a Virtual Machine from a physical machine
2) Configure newly created Virtual Machine to make an existing image bootable

In this case, I am going to demonstrate how you can import a physical running machine (while that machine is running).

Server /IP	EBS /192.168.2.114 (PhySical)	ESXi/ 192.168.2.110 (Virtual)
Hard Disk Space	274 GB of Local SCSI space	274 GB on Openfiler Storage
Applications	Running Oracle EBS Suite Release 12
Make/Model	Dell PowerEdge 2650	Dell PowerEdge 2650
Memory	6 GB	8 GB allocated 3.4 GB

First download a VMware converter, here standalone in my case. Install it and click on a “Convert Machine” icon.

Enter the machine IP address/ Root username and password to be virtualized

Now enter ESXi host details. I have mounted a terabyte HDD space on my ESXi using openfiler and I wish to push this machine to my SAN storage.

Adjust settings you want altered at destination for example Memory size, CPU numbers, HDD volumes

Click on finish and you will be presented a monitoring console as below. Now wait until it’s all done. For me it’s about 7 hours. The speed of copying is fairly slow despite having a network bandwidth of 1GBPS between all nodes.

If you look at vmware console , you will see progress details as below

One can also monior the progress by looking at File -> Export Logs -> vmware-converter-agent-XXX.log file