Physical-to-Virtual
In computing. Physical-to-Virtual involves the process of decoupling and migrating a physical server's operating system, applications, and data from that physical server to a virtual-machine guest hosted on a virtualized platform.
Methods of P2V migration
Manual P2V
User manually creates a virtual machine in a virtual host environment and copies all the files from OS, applications and data from the source machine.Semi-automated P2V
Performing a P2V migration using a tool that assists the user in moving the servers from physical state to virtual machine.- Microsoft's ,
- VMware provides a semi-automated tool called VMware vCenter Converter for moving physical servers running Windows or Linux into virtual environments while they are powered on. VMware vCenter Converter replaces two older utilities: Importer and P2V Assistant.
- Oracle's Virtual Box which allows the conversion of a dd image of an existing hard drive
- Microsoft provides the SysInternals utility for making images from Windows XP or later systems to be used with Windows Virtual PC, Microsoft Virtual Server or Hyper-V.
- , an open-source datacenter management platform, does P2V.
- Storix's bare-metal recovery product provides P2V and V2P capabilities for Linux, AIX, and Solaris.
Fully automated P2V
- Veritas Backup Exec has Physical to Virtual conversion feature build into the backup engine which can be used for migrations or instant recovery
- vContinuum vContinuum by InMage systems is an automated P2V data protection/migration tool
- enables fast, automated P2V and V2P conversions
- Quest vConverter is an example of a fully automated migration tool for P2V.
- System Center Virtual Machine Manager SCVMM among many other capabilities has P2V capability.
- Leostream is an example of a fully automated migration tool for P2V.
- PlateSpin Migrate is an example of a fully automated migration tool for P2V.
- Virtuozzo contains automatic P2V migration tools.
- SanXfer by InQuinox is an automated server and data migration tool for P2V, V2P, and P2P with complete hardware independence.
- SureEdge, migrator by sureline systems is fully automated server data migration tool for p2v, V2vLinux and windows server migration, applications, i.e. Ms SQL server, oracle with complete hardware independence, cloud independent from any cloud to any cloud migration.