Migrating Physical Computers to Virtual Machines and Containers

You can use the pmigrate utility to migrate a standalone physical computer to a virtual machine or Container. The procedure includes copying the entire contents of a physical computer, including all files, directories, quota limits, settings, and so on, to a virtual machine or Container on a Parallels server. Migration of a computer produces its exact copy in the form of a virtual machine or Container, including operating system, assigned IP addresses, disk space, memory capacity, etc.

Migrating a physical computer to a virtual machine or Container involves completing the following steps:

1. Installing the Parallels agent on the source physical computer (required for migrating to virtual machines only).
2. Running the pmigrate utility on the destination server.

Installing the Parallels Agent

The Parallels agent collects essential system data on the source physical computer and supplies it to the pmigrate utility on the destination Parallels server. To install the agent, do the following:

1. Make sure that the source physical computer meets the requirements for installing the agent. See Requirements for Migrating to Virtual Machines for details.
2. Log in to the source physical computer as administrator.
3. Copy the correct agent installation file to the source physical computer from the /usr/share/pmigrate/tools directory on the destination Parallels server:
   • For a Linux OS, choose parallels-transporter-agent- XXXX .run .
   • For a Windows OS, choose ParallelsTransporterAgent-parallels- XXXX .exe .
4. Run the installation file on the source physical computer and follow the wizard’s instructions.
5. Restart the source physical computer to complete the installation.

   Note : The Parallels agent is launched automatically after restart. You do not need to run in manually.

Migrating Source Physical Computer

Once the source physical computer is up and running, you can migrate it to a virtual machine or Container on the destination Parallels server. For example, to migrate a physical computer to a virtual machine, run the following command on the destination server:

# pmigrate h root:1qsde34rt@192.168.1.130 v MyVM

Where:

• h indicates that the migration source is a physical computer.
• root:1qsde34rt@192.168.1.130 contains the source physical computer credentials and IP address.

  If you omit credentials, you will be asked to provide them during command execution.

• v indicates that the migration destination is a virtual machine.
• MyVM is the name of the resulting virtual machine on the destination Parallels server.

Once the procedure is complete, you will find the resulting virtual machine in the /var/parallels directory on the destination Parallels server.

To migrate the same physical computer to a Container, just replace v with c and MyVM with a Container ID (e.g., 101). For example:

# pmigrate h root:1qsde34rt@192.168.1.130 c 101

Notes:

1. Migrating physical computers running Windows operating systems to Containers is not supported.

2. Migrating physical computers with ReiserFS system volumes is not supported.