Hi,

I would like to "clone" manually the disks from a server to another.

The situation is :

1. On one side I have a physical server (RHEL 5.6) with two disks : 'sdb' for the OS, cut in several partitions and sda for datas

2. On the other side I'v created a VM (RHEL 5.6) with two disks

What I want is to copy the entire datas and filesystems from 1. to 2. and start my VM in the same state like if I was on my physical server.

But I don't know how to do this... Can i "dd" the sdb (OS) from the physical server to my second disk on the VM ? And after that, change to bootable my second virtual disk ?

Thanks

Yes. You probably now have 2 files for the VM representing disks - replace them with the 2 copies taken from your first server and remake the VM (after adjusting for changes to IP addresses etc).

example dd commands: http://www.pantz.org/software/dd/dri...hsshanddd.html

Ok. So I don't need to create first in the virtual disk the same partitions as my physical disk ?

My virtual disk is seen in my VM like a "normal" disk (/dev/vdb).

If I understand correctly, then you will want to follow this process

• Boot both servers with a boot CD
• Make sure you have network connectivity (same switch or direct connect would be ideal)
• Make sure you understand that the drive mappings have to stay the same. ie, old sda must go to new sda. old sdb must go to new sdb.
• Understand that this process will overwrite anything in the VM. You are copying DRIVES,.. that means UUID's, partitions, MBRs.. ALL OF IT.

Do that for each drive (sda, sdb, sdc and so on)

At the end of this, you will have copied each drive from the old server to the new VM. Essentially CLONING it from old to new.

You will have to make minor config changes,.. such as the IP address if you are using static IP's, and the mac address if it is statically set. Also, there might be some VM configuration you will have to change, such as Network Adapters and number of CPU's.

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You could clone the drive to drive by some means and then run a vm that uses the physical disk. Vm would be on the primary drive and never use the secondary drive for the vm.

In any clone you have to understand that some changes may need to be made either before or after. Grub and fstab issues may have devices loading or not loading.

What I've done before (with room) is to use something to clone data off primary to a single file image. Then boot vm and use shared source to place image on vm.

You can also do a rsync but you have to be careful to use live booted media. You can't easily clone off a running system. You could rsync most of the data and then fix stuff.