The other day I
got a chance to migrate the domain controller to our VMware ESX-based private
cloud. Since this was the primary domain controller which was also running DNS,
DHCP, Print Server as well as McAfee ePO server it was a critical component to the
company. I did some research and followed guidelines found on internet. I
followed the steps in the following order:
- First defragment the hard drive of physical server, which will
make the process faster.
- In the meantime, collect the following data from the physical
server which will prove very useful during/after migration.
o Domain Admin credentials (Since it is domain controller, you
cannot get local admin credentials like other servers)
o A screenshot of Ipconfig /all
o Current and proposed hardware configuration (vCPU, memory, HDD)
o If you have vCenter running a cluster, then write down local
credentials of one of the servers in the cluster.
- After defragmentation is finished, open the vCenter Converter
and follow these steps:
o Choose convert machine, and put in the server name and
credentials.
o If you have vCenter running, then type in the vCenter server
name and credentials and the select the usual stuff (which server you want to
run on/which datastore etc).
o DON’T CLICK FINISH YET!!! We still need to configure the hard
drive. In the left column select the hard drive and give all the partitions its
own virtual disk and uncheck any partition that shows up as ‘?’ which is possibly
system partition (I’m not for sure). In my case the migration failed the first
time at 11% because I had single virtual disk for both partitions and hadn’t
unchecked the third partition. Also, in “advanced” make sure that turn on
virtual machine when finished is not checked.
o OPTIONAL: While I did not, you are supposed to turn off relevant
services and turn them back on after migration to prevent any hiccups.
o Now you can click next and finish. (And wait forever and ever
for the converter to finish converting)
- After the conversion has finished don’t turn off the physical
machine just yet. First login to the vCenter server and verify that you can see
the machine. Go to edit settings and get rid of serial ports or floppy drives
(which I hope you aren’t using anyway). Now happily say your old machine good
bye.
POST MIGRATION STEPS
- Turn on the Virtual machine, and let it go through the first
boot process. It will delete a bunch of stuff and reconfigure itself.
- Login to the machine and install VMware tools (and restart).
- Now from what I have read online, during the conversion process
the NICs get deleted but not uninstalled. This means that you have to uninstall
them manually before you can configure the new NICs. The instructions follow:
o Open command prompt and type the following commands in order:
§ set
devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
§ start DEVMGMT.MSC
o Click ‘View’ and then click ‘Show Hidden Devices’.
o Expand the Network Adapters tree and right click the dimmed
network adapter and click ‘Uninstall’ (You may also see a hidden 'RAS async
adapter' device under NICs. This cannot be uninstalled. However, it doesn't
matter as it doesn't influence the NIC issue, so just leave it).
- Using the screenshot you took earlier give your NIC a static
IP/DNS server.
- Verify that services.msc has all the services running.
- I had a small checklist to make sure that all the crucial
services were running after migration:
o Domain: Can you login from other
computer?
o DHCP: Can you release/renew?
o DNS: Can you flush DNS and then
access websites?
o McAfee ePO:
Can you update policies?
o Print
Server: Can you add a printer to
computers?
THE HICCUP
After
migration all the other services were running just fine except McAfee ePO. When
I tried to access the web console it showed a bunch of errors (at least 25 of
them!!). At this point I assumed that the data was corrupt and that I will have
to re-install ePO (and cursing to myself, why did I not turn off the McAfee
service before migration). The next day before re-installing ePO I tried to
restart McAfee services and guess what McAfee started working like it had never
seen issues! Lesson learned: Always turn off relevant services before
migration.
Hope
it helps someone out there!
