Reviews:
 ·T-Mobile US
| Virtual Image for Wipe & Reinstall Need to nuke and reinstall my primary desktop system, however since I run a small business and rely heavily on the apps on this system, I cannot afford down time. Looking for a suggestion to make a virtual image of my current system and then use that while I get everything reconfigured and up and running (I have a few legacy apps that are a real PITA to reconfigure and get running correctly).
Looking for suggestions on the best way to do this, thanks.
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This Space for Rent... |
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aguenPremium
join:2003-07-16
Grants Pass, OR Reviews:
 ·Callcentric
 ·Verizon FiOS
| said by nightdesigns:Looking for a suggestion to make a virtual image of my current system and then use that while I get everything reconfigured and up and running .....
Looking for suggestions on the best way to do this, thanks.
Are you referring to using some kind of a Virtual Machine environment on which to host your virtual image?
I'm a bit confused as to what you want to really do. |
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Reviews:
·T-Mobile US
| Sorry, wasn't clear.
Create a virtual image of my current system, throw that on another drive. Wipe & Reinstall windows. While getting everything up and running, run that virtual image on this local machine until I have everything configured properly.
Should also mention, this is an all-in-one system, so pulling the drive or adding a second isn't really possible.
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This Space for Rent... |
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aguenPremium
join:2003-07-16
Grants Pass, OR | reply to nightdesigns
What kind of hardware does this "other machine" have? Got enough free disk space? What OS is running on it? |
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| reply to nightdesigns
Dual Core E5400, 100G+ Free, Win 7 Pro
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This Space for Rent... |
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 quakerPremium
join:2001-12-27
Rocky River, OH | reply to nightdesigns
you could do a P2V, but its best to do it when its shutdown specially if there is a database. Doing a live one is possible though. |
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aguenPremium
join:2003-07-16
Grants Pass, OR | reply to nightdesigns
How much memory on both systems? How much disk space does the "primary" system currently use/need? Also, please define what you mean by an "all in one system"? Is it using some kind of proprietary hardware/software? |
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 izyPremium,MVM
join:2000-09-21
endless loop
kudos:1 | reply to nightdesigns
Playing devils's advocate here...why are you wanting to go through this process?  |
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Reviews:
·T-Mobile US
| reply to nightdesigns
This is just 1 system. I will be making an image of it, nuking the drive and while I'm getting everything up and running and configured, I'd like to run the image of the old system on the fresh install (running the old system image virtually as a program on fresh install).
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This Space for Rent... |
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izyPremium,MVM
join:2000-09-21
endless loop
kudos:1 | Your going to need two systems to accomplish what you are trying to do.
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"Intellectuals solve problems, geniuses prevent them." Einstein |
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 kvn864
join:2001-12-18
Glendale, AZ
kudos:1 | reply to nightdesigns
Right izy, you cant run virtual box on a host that is being reinstalled. Need 2 machines, preferably close to each other in specs, so the virtual box runs fine on the second machine while the main is being reinstalled. |
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| Sorry, I guess I wasn't clear once again. VM would be run AFTER fresh windows install. Not on a bare metal machine.
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This Space for Rent... |
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 jay608Going Nucking Futs
join:2007-01-22
Chicago, IL | reply to nightdesigns
You could use something like Acronis, take a full backup do your install of the new OS, install VMware converter and do a restore to VMware player, if not player VMworkstation.
You may even beable to use windows backup to do the process above. |
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JoelC707Premium
join:2002-07-09
Stone Mountain, GA
kudos:5 | reply to nightdesigns
Ugh, legacy apps are the bane of my existence. I have one remaining Server 2003 system all because of a legacy app that does not cooperate with Server 2008 (even the new-at-the-time version we got a few years ago  ). And worse than that I can not reactivate this application if something happens to the VM.
Fortunately I was able to migrate it from a physical machine to virtual while I could still activate it again. But that became a problem too because I was using Hyper-V at the time and I haven't been able to successfully migrate this VM to ESX without it breaking the activation. This one VM is forcing me to maintain a Hyper-V server just for it (granted I run some other VMs on it just so it isn't a total waste but still).
Now, in your case, you CAN do what you're talking about. Because you're running Windows 7 pro, you can do a P2V clone of your system and keep it as a VHD to boot as a VM. Some systems even let you boot that VHD as your "main" hard drive but that may require Windows 8 to accomplish, not sure. That's not really what you want to do anyway.
The only down side I can see with your plan is the space required. Look at whatever your current used space is and double that. Is your hard drive big enough for that? It won't be exactly double because chances are on your "refreshed" system, you won't have everything loaded back on there but double is a good baseline.
It will work though provided you have the storage space for it. You obviously won't have all the available memory on the VM that you do on the host. You could add more memory to the host if that is critical or just deal with lower memory availability to the host and the guest VM. It's not something I would want to keep running that's for sure but for maintaining access to applications while you reinstall them, it will work just fine. |
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mikefxu
join:2004-10-05
Titusville, FL | reply to nightdesigns
VMware vCenter Converter then VMware Player. Dual boot would also be an option. |
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