Windows 7 P2V
Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 Physical to Virtual migration
Interested in doing a P2V migration with your Windows 7 system? With the help of two utilities we now have the ability to do just that. We will use Portlock License Manager to manage and capture a WIM image of our Windows 7 system and a script written for WIM to VHD conversions to boot our Windows 7 system into a virtual environment.
For those of you manging your WIM files from command line with "imageX", Portlock License Manager really does provide a great set of tools for mounting, dismounting, editing and creating WIM images.
Once Portlock License Manager is installed go to File>Relaunch program with admin rights as WIM file mangement requires administrative privileges. Now to create our system image. In the left hand pane right click on a WIM library that will represent your WIM image and select "Create WIM Image".
You should now be presented with a menu for creating your image. For directory path you will select the entire "C:\". This will represent an image of your entire system. Also, check both boxes to "append date to image" and "enable volume snapshots". Appending data is not a crucial step but does allow you to add additional data to your image in the future. Once finished select "Create". Depending on the size of your system this may take awhile to complete.
Once the WIM image has been created we will now run the WIM2VHD script.
Note: In addition to the script Windows 7 AIK must be installed on your system as well.
Because we are working with a custom Windows 7 image the following script will be used from a DOS prompt in the directory the WIM2VHD script is saved.
CSCRIPT WIM2VHD.WSF /WIM:C:\Library\WIN7PC.WIM /SKU:1 /VHD:C:\Win7PC.VHD
SKU:1 = 1 is specific to the number of index images in our WIM file
After the script has completed the creation of the VHD we can now boot into a VM. Supported virtual platforms include: Microsoft Hyper-V, Virtual PC, Virtual Server and Virtual Box.
Learn more... Wednesday, June 17, 2009
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