VMware P2V Assistant 2.1

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The VMware P2V Assistant helper machine is a physical or virtual machine that contains the P2V Assistant application. It communicates with the source physical machine using the P2V Assistant Boot CD.

The helper machine performs the cloning operation and saves the new cloned virtual disk in a location you specify. The P2V Assistant helper machine also performs the reconfiguration phase on cloned disks containing a supported operating system. If the direct to disk option is used for system reconfiguration, the target virtual disk is a virtual disk attached to a helper virtual machine.

Additionally, the helper machine provides a means to view the new virtual disk when troubleshooting. For example, you can edit the boot.ini on the new virtual disk.

The helper machine, on which VMware P2V Assistant is installed, requires the following:

• Machine — Choose an appropriate machine. Do not install the VMware P2V Assistant directly on a business-critical GSX Server host machine. The P2V Assistant can consume memory and CPU resources.

  You can install it in a workstation, a laptop, or a virtual machine running on a GSX Server, ESX Server, or Workstation system.

• Disk space — Have at least 10MB free disk space for the application, 200MB free disk space for temporary files, and available disk space for the new virtual disks.
• Networking — Have at least one NTFS volume on a basic disk, be on the network, and have port 7000 (or other configurable port) open for imaging protocol.
• Compatible VMware product — You may run a helper virtual machine on one of the following compatible virtualization platforms:
  • VMware ESX Server 2.x
  • VMware GSX Server 3.x
  • VMware Workstation 4.x

    P2V Assistant 2.1 does not support VMware ESX Server 1.x, VMware GSX Server 2.x, or VMware Workstation 3.x.

• Compatible operating system — The version of the operating system where P2V Assistant is running must be at least equal to the operating system on the cloned disk. The table below lists the acceptable operating systems to use for the helper virtual machine for each source machine.

  If source machine is running ...	Helper machine must be running ...
  	Windows NT Server	Windows 2000	Windows XP	Windows 2003
  Windows NT Server	yes
  Windows 2000		yes	yes	yes
  Windows XP			yes	yes
  Windows 2003			yes	yes