Migrating an entire source to a provisioned virtual machine on a VMware ESX target

1. Create a new virtual machine.
2. Add the disk(s) for that virtual machine to its own machine.
3. Mount the disk(s).
4. Apply the incoming mirror data (the original source data and system state information) from the source server to the mounted disk(s).
5. Unmount the disk(s).
6. Remove the disk(s) from its own machine.
7. Start the new virtual machine.

Once the new virtual machine is online, it will have the identity, data, and system state of the original source. Since the existing virtual machine maintains its own identity, it can be reused for additional migrations.

1. Click Migrate Server from the left navigation pane.

2. Identify the source server that you want to migrate.

   

   • Server—Specify the name of the source server. You can also click Browse to select the name from Active Directory or from a network drill-down list.
   • User name—Specify a user that is a member of the Double-Take Admin security group on the source.
   • Password—Specify the password associated with the User name you entered.
   • Domain—If you are working in a domain environment, specify the Domain.
3. Click Next to continue.

4. Identify the target server. This is the ESX server that will host the virtual machine that, after the migration, will become your new source.

   

   • Provision a new virtual machine for this migration—Enable this option to migrate to an automatically provisioned (non-existing) virtual machine hosted on a VMware ESX server.
   • Server—Specify the name of the ESX server.
   • User name—Specify the root user or another user that has the administrator role on the VMware ESX server.
   • Password—Specify the password associated with the User name you entered.
   • Domain—This option is not needed for a VMware ESX server.
5. Click Next to continue.

6. By default, Double-Take Move selects your entire source for migration. If desired, you can exclude volumes that you do not want to migrate, but be careful when excluding data. Excluded volumes may compromise the integrity of your installed applications. There are some volumes that you will be unable to exclude, because they are required for migration. For example, the boot and system volumes cannot be excluded because that is where the system state information is stored. For non-boot and non-system volumes, you can exclude them if necessary. Volumes marked with a checkmark are included. If there is no checkmark, the volume is excluded. Click on an item to add or remove a checkmark. Once you have configured the data to migrate, click Next to continue.

   

   The Select all and Deselect all buttons allow you to quickly select or deselect all user data on your server. These buttons do not change the selection of system state data, which is defined by Double-Take Move and cannot be modified manually.

    

7. Specify the volumes to create on the new virtual machine.

   

   • Selected Data—This displays the amount of data, in gigabytes, currently on the source volume.
   • Source Size—This displays the size, in gigabytes, of the volume on the source.
   • Provisioned Volume—Specify the size, in gigabytes, of the volume to be created on the new virtual.
   • Virtual Disk Type—For each volume you are protecting, specify the type of disk, Dynamic or Fixed, that will be created on the virtual machine.
8. Click Next to continue.

9. Choose a datastore on the target to store the protected data and system state information that will be incoming from the source server. You can only select a target datastore that has enough free space available. The amount of necessary disk space is noted at the bottom of the page.

   

   If the size of the datastore is identical to the size of the disk on the source and there is less than 20 MB of free space on that source, you may run out of disk space on the datastore due to differences in how the virtual disk block size is formatted. In this case, make sure that your datastore has at least 20 MB more disk space than the size of the disk on the source.

    

10. Click Next to continue.

11. Choose the Virtual Recovery Appliance, which is your existing virtual machine, that will be used to create the new virtual machine. The existing virtual machine must have both Windows and Double-Take Move installed and licensed on it.

    

    • Server—Specify the name of the existing virtual machine on the ESX server. The drop-down list will only display virtual machines that are running and have an operating system capable of performing a migration.
    • User name—Specify a user that is a member of the Double-Take Admin security group on the existing virtual machine. The user must also be a member of the local administrators group. If your original source is the only domain controller in your network, the user must be a local account in the local administrators group on virtual recovery appliance.
    • Password—Specify the password associated with the User name you entered.
    • Domain—If you are working in a domain environment, specify the Domain.
    • VMware Tools—Any servers from the Server list that do not have the latest VMware tools installed will be listed.
12. Click Next to continue.

13. Configure the new virtual machine that will be created and will become the source after the migration.

    

    • VMware Console display name—By default, the source name_VM will be used to create the new virtual machine display name. If desired, you can modify the name.
    • Map replica virtual network IP to target networks—You will need to identify how you want to handle the network mapping. The Replica VM Network IP lists the IP addresses on the source. Map each one to a Target Network, which is a virtual network on the VMware ESX server.
    • Number of processors—Specify how many processors to configure on the virtual machine. The number of processors on the source is displayed.
    • Amount of memory—Specify the amount of memory, in megabytes, to configure on the virtual machine. The amount of memory on the source is displayed.
    • Automatically power on the virtual machine—Select this checkbox if you want the virtual machine to automatically start after cutover.
14. Click Next to continue.

15. Specify your migration shutdown options.

    

    • Wait for user intervention before cutover—If you select this option, Double-Take Move will pause the migration process after the source data has been mirrored to the target, which allows you time to coordinate any other tasks. Replication will continue during this time. If you do not select this option, cutover will be automatic, meaning the source will cutover to the target immediately after the mirror is complete. If your source is running applications, it is important that you enable this option. During the intervention time, you can stop your applications that are running on the source. This lets you stop services cleanly on the source and let that final application data be replicated and applied on the target. This helps ensure your applications will start cleanly on the target after cutover.
    • Shut down the source server—Specify if you want to shut down the source server before the source is cutover to the target, which avoids identity conflicts on the network. The shutdown will occur after mirroring is completed but before the source system state is applied to the target server.
16. Click Next to continue.
17. At the Migration summary page, you can review the choices you have made and you can also configure optional settings. If you need to make any changes to the selections you made, click Back to return to the previous pages. If you want to configure optional settings, click Configure. Once you have completed your configuration, click Finish to start the migration.
18. Monitor the progress of the migration mirror on the Monitor page.
19. When the migration mirror has completed, the target may or may not reboot automatically depending on your selection for Wait for user intervention before cutover. If you disabled user intervention, the target will reboot automatically to complete the migration process. If you enabled user intervention, when the migration mirror is complete, the status will change to Ready for Cutover. Use this time to complete any necessary tasks. When you are ready to complete the migration, click Cutover on the Monitor page toolbar to complete the migration process, which will reboot the target.

Once the virtual machine has been rebooted, it will become the source server.

If your source was disconnected from the network during the cutover process, the original job that was mirroring the data will still be active on that machine. Do not bring that machine back on the network. If you do, the original job will attempt to begin mirroring data again which could result in data loss. While the machine is still disconnected from the network, stop the Double-Take service, delete the file connect.sts located in the Double-Take Move installation directory, and then restart the Double-Take service. This will delete the original job. After the original job is deleted, you can bring the machine on the network if desired.