I have an old server that I want to virtualise. It is using RH ES4 v4 and I understand that that is not available to virtualise directly as P2V. If I create a VM to copy my server apps to, which distro would be best to use? I want to be able to create a backup copy of the old server and restore to the VM.

I am using an IBM x3650 m7979 for this. It is the same as the original server. I want to eventually get the VM of this server on to a Hyper-V host with win server 2016.

Moving the programs from an old system to a new system may be either trivial or impossible. I'd at least consider using Centos/Scientific linux.


If I had to move a system like that it would be for the most part like any system clone across hardware types. One might be able to take this drive image and make a raw file out of it and import it or convert it to some vm format.
Usually on clones you could have naming issues that either have to be made generic at first or fixed later.

Thanks for your help. I am not familiar with Linux and I have this one old server to preserve.

I am thinking that if I can make a clone of the original, then I could experiment with the copy to bring it up to the point that I could make a virtualised copy on some more modern equipment. This will probably involve upgrading the OS under the working program and checking each time to make sure it still works.

I'm hoping that I can make a bare metal recovery to start with. Any suggestions on what backup product will work with the RH ES4?

Some of these servers are sometimes goofy in booting. Do you have an external dvd drive?

Anyway you should be able to import a physical to virtual and then depending on the VM make changes to client OS. Might have to adjust virtual machine config in some cases to allow common virtual devices to be loaded.

To clone/backup one can use a number of tools. The most basic and maybe most dangerous is to boot to some other live media like a live DVD and use command line dd to copy hard drive to some remote or external drive.
Really you ought to have some live dvd's and usb drives for use.

They make boot clone distros like the very basic but awesome G4U floppy/cd. There is a popular clonezilla distro and redobackup. Basically you'd want to boot to some media not the hard drive for clones.

To simply back up a partition one could use gparted.

Of course Red Hat has a wealth of information about it's products and usually free to see on web.


As to migrating to a new version of linux may be beyond a new users task if this is mission critical.

Do you have a tape backup of this system? Has someone performed any backups of any type?