#Linux #VMware #P2V #V2V #Windows2000 #Tech

A client of mine has a customer of his who runs a Windows 2000 Terminal Server because their antique ERP client will only run on Windows XP-level machines.

I already converted the ERP server last week: a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 server running Oracle 10g that I had to turn into CentOS because its RHN subscription had run out and I needed a newer kernel + headers for vmware-guest tools. The RHEL P2V worked well, and now it is the W2K TS's turn.

The Hypervisor I am moving this to is ESXi 6.5 and it turns out VMware Converter 6 will not migrate a Windows 2000 system: for this you need Vmware Converter 4. But Converter 4 will not migrate to ESXi higher than V4.

So how do we do?

Well, here is what I am in the middle of doing:

• install ESXi 4 in ESXi 6 (yes, you can nest ESX installations)
• convert the Win2k system to ESXi 4 (you can do this on the live system) with VMware Converter 4
• DO NOT start the newly converted VM in ESXi 4!
• fire up a Windows system that has access to both the ESXi 4 virtual OS and the ESXi 6 infrastructure
• install VMware converter 6 onto the Windows machine, and perform a V2V offline conversion of the intermediate W2K VM to ESXi 6

I have not finished migration yet (I have to upload Win10 ISO to have my Windows system) but as crazy as it sounds, I think it should work.

Update: it actually did work. I had to install an old version of the VMware Tools that is compatible with Windows 2000 to have proper display drivers and in order for networking to work. Everything is working now.