Comparison: SCVMM P2V and Sysinternals Disk2VHD

hectorl — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 00:40:00 GMT

Sysinterals recently released a free P2V. The comparison table below is for your reference to help highlight the difference in features and functionality between the two. The table is not meant to pin one tool against the other (i.e. who is better). The free tool is not meant to compete against VMM P2V. The free tool does however address the following gaps:

1. Support technician that needs to capture a VM from a physical machine for troubleshooting purposes (VMM is not deployed)

2. Customers that do not want deploy VMM just for P2V or pay for another product

3. End-user converting their own desktop to VMs without requiring a server admin

Features	VMM P2V	Sysinternals Disk2vhd
Disable services offline after conversion	Yes	No
Disable drivers offline after conversion	Yes	No
Offline P2V support (uses WINPE)	Yes	No
Hardware Re-configuration (e.g. change MAC address on vNIC)	Yes	No
Automation through scripting	Yes (POSH)	No (Command shell)
Job progress and job audit	Yes	No (can code something in POSH for job progress)
Supports remote execution	Yes	No
Supports no user interaction on source	Yes	No
Enhanced placement technology to know which host to place the VM workload on	Yes	No
Carry over network configuration from source NICs (static IP)	Yes	No
Skip copy of empty space on source to improve transfer time	Yes	Yes
Uses VSS for online P2V	Yes	Yes
Supports BITS for transferring files (both online and offline) - secure, re-start	Yes	No
Support streaming of data between the source and destination	Yes	No
Support disk size expansion	Yes	No
Automatically install Integration Services	Yes	No
Support W2KSP4	Yes	No
Support client and server OS - XP, W2K3, Vista, W2K8, Win7, W2K8 R2	Yes	Yes
Automatic creation of VM as part of conversion	Yes	No
Free	No	Yes
Requires Management Tool (additional infrastructure)	No	Yes
End-user standalone interface	No	Yes

How to change default P2V port

hectorl — Thu, 13 Nov 2008 22:24:00 GMT

VMM2008 will block P2V on source machines with an SSL cert registered on 443. To change the default port used by VMM, please follow these precise steps.

1.       Go to Regedit->HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager Server\Settings
2.       Create a new DWORD reg entry named “P2VBITSTcpPort” and give it a decimal value of say 3043 or any other port that is not being used on the host machine.
3.       Go to system services (services.msc) and restart Virtual Machine Manager service.

Virtualization: Revolution of the evolving datacenter : P2V

Comparison: SCVMM P2V and Sysinternals Disk2VHD

How to change default P2V port