How To Convert Physical Computer to Virtual Machine by Using (VMware, VirtualBox & Virtual PC) By Anas Amin

Introdiction

Virtual Machine software like VirtualBox, Virtual PC, Parallels, VMware etc, The Virtual Machine software are designed keeping high-end usage requirements in mind, and therefore, such applications are authorized to gain complete control over all the installed hardware and software components.

Today, we look at the the easiest way to convert the local machine to virtual machine, and then configure and run it on other systems using virtualization softwares.

First you need a conversion tool that can turn your local machine into virtual machine. 

VMware provides a free utility called VMware vCenter Converter for physical to virtual machine conversions.

 It can create a VMware Disk image of the entire system, including installed drives, local drives, configured hardware and software components, installed applications and more.

The application also provides a central conversion management console to help you organize and monitor local and remote machine conversion instances.

To get started, launch VMware vCenter Converter (download link given at the bottom of the post), and click Convert Machine on toolbar.

It will start the Conversion wizard. 

The first step is to select the source type of machine (physical or virtual machine) that you want to make.

It supports selecting the current machine (physical machine), VMware Infrastructure virtual machine, VMware Workstation, Hyper-V Server, and other third-party virtual machines. 

So you need to convert the current machine to virtual machine, select Powered-on machinesource type from drop-down menu, and then enable This local machine option.

So You can view the details of selected machine by hitting View source details. 
It shows name of the selected machine, machine type (virtual or physical), installed OS on selected machine, RAM size, Volumes layout, Total system size and other system-related information. 

After conform the target physical machine, click Close followed by Next button.

In This step, it will ask you to specify the destination type and VMware product. Choose VMware Workstation or other VMware virtual machine option as destination type, and select the target VMware product (VMware Workstation, VMware Player, VMware Server or VMware Fusion).

it is recommended to save the VMDK file on external hard disk. However, to run the virtual machine on local system, you may choose any location on hard drive.

When Preliminary settings are configured, it shows a local machine explorer to let you choose the folders and drives that are to be included in VMDK file. 

Here  you can exclude the local drives, and configure system components’ settings including Processors, Networks, CPU Throttling level and more.

when done, click Next to view the physical to virtual machine conversion summary.

Clicking Finish will start the conversion process. 

It will create a VMX (VMware Virtual Machine Configuration) file along with VMware disk image file to help you quickly launch the converted physical machine in VMware Virtualization software.

When the physical machine is converted into virtual machine, move to system where you want to run the converted physical machine. 

Launch the VMware virtualization software (VMware workstation, VMware Player, etc), and open the VMX file to boot the OS of converted physical machine.

The VirtualBox supports VMware VMDK container format, 

It will open Create New Virtual Machine wizard. Specify the name of virtual machine, operating system and then its version. If you’re creating Windows 7 virtual machine, just enter Windows 7 and it will automatically set the default Operating System Type.

The next step deals with setting the maximum amount of physical RAM that can be used by virtual machine. Specify the RAM size and click Next.

Now, instead of creating a new hard disk, choose Use present hard disk option to specify source location of converted physical machine disk (VMDK file). Once selected, Click Next.

This page lets you verify the virtual machine configurations. 
Now, click Finish to create a virtual machine.

Once done, select the newly created virtual machine, and hit Start on toolbar to launch the OS of your converted physical machine.

Microsoft Virtual PC is another widely used virtualization software that allows running multiple guest operating systems simultaneously. 

Although the latest version supports only Windows 7, it presents a simple wizard to create Windows and Linux-based OS virtual machines.

If you used VMware vCenter Converter to create virtual machine disk of physical machine, you probably want to convert the VMDK (converted physical machine) file into VHD format, so that it can be used with MS Virtual PC. 

StarWind offers a free application that allows you to convert numerous virtual disk formats. Using StarWind’s V2V Image Converter, you can convert a VMDK (fixed and dynamic) disk image into VHD format. Not only does it convert between Virtual Disk formats, 

To begin, install StarWind V2V Image Converter, and launch it to specify the source VMDK container file. On the main interface, it asks you to specify the complete path of source image file you want to convert. Just enter the complete path of VMDK file, and then click Next.

Now, specify the output image format from the list, and click Next.

In this step, just specify the target location where VHD image is to saved

Click Next will begin the conversion process. 

The time it takes to convert the VMDK file to VHD format depends upon the size of VMDK file.

When VMDK image is converted into VHD file, launch MS Virtual PC to start New Virtual Machine wizard. 

After entering the name of virtual machine and allocating maximum amount of physical RAM, select An existing virtual hard disk option, and click Next.

Now, specify the converted VHD image file and click Next to begin creating virtual machine.

Microsoft Virtual PC falls somewhere in between the power of VMWare and simplicity of VirtualBox. 

It supports only a limited number of virtual machine additions, so you may face some technical issues while using the converted physical machine in MS Virtual PC.

So we recommend using a VMware virtualization software to get the best performance from the VM disk image. In order to further boost the guest OS performance, you should install all essential virtual machine additions and other OS-specific tools.

Download VMware vCenter Converter

Thanks By Anas Amin

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