Section 6.8. P-to-V Conclusion

6.8. P-to-V Conclusion

Table 6.1 is a matrix that examines the four p-to-v methods discussed in this chapter. The pros and cons of each method are listed, which may help you decide which method is right for you.

Table 6-1. The Four P-to-V Methods

	cat Your Hard Drive	BartPE	VMware P2V Assistant	Platespin Power P2V
Costs money	N	N[1]	Y	Y
Physical contact with source or target server required	Y	Y	Y	N
Multiple simultaneous conversions possible	Y	Y	N	Y
All ESX guest operating system support
Windows NT 4.0	Y	Y	Y	Y
Windows 2000	Y	Y	Y	Y
Windows 2003	Y	Y	Y	Y
Windows XP	Y	Y	Y	Y
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.0	Y	Y	N	N
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 2.1	Y	Y	N	N
Red Hat Linux Advanced Server 2.1	Y	Y	N	N
Red Hat Linux 9.0	Y	Y	N	N
Red Hat Linux 8.0	Y	Y	N	Y
Red Hat Linux 7.3	Y	Y	N	Y
Red Hat Linux 7.2	Y	Y	N	N
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 9	Y	N	N	N
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 8	Y	N	N	N
SUSE Linux 9.2	Y	Y	N	N
SUSE Linux 9.1	Y	Y	N	N
SUSE Linux 9.0	Y	Y	N	N
SUSE Linux 8.2	Y	Y	N	N
FreeBSD 4.10	Y	N	N	N
FreeBSD 4.9	Y	N	N	N
NetWare 6.5 Server	Y	N	N	N
NetWare 6.0 Server	Y	N	N	N
NetWare 5.1 Server	Y	N	N	N
Disk resizing	N[2]	Y	Y	Y
Scheduled P-to-V migrations	N	N	N	Y
Automatic Hal and Ntoskrnl cleanup	N	N	Y	Y
Easy to use	N	Y	Y	Y

^[1] Not a lot

^[2] Requires the use of vmkfstools and repartitioning software