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I have an old physical box with Ubuntu 16.05, and disks are about to die (md mirror is there, and disks itself are really old), and I need to copy it over to HyperV 2019 Core host as a VM. I have night time only to do the move.

All I can imagine is to run Clonezilla Live on both Ubuntu box and in VM and do the trick, but I'd also want to get rid of md (no point to use twice the size on HyperV host).

HyperV 2019 seems to be more Linux-friendly than older HyperV versions so may there be any better way to do physical->virtual Ubuntu box move?

Kevin M
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There is more than one way, but a good way also includes an OS upgrade and bare OS restore testing.

  • Build new guests on the latest version, currently Ubuntu 18.04 (soon 20.04).
  • Install application packages.
  • Restore data from file based backups.
  • Make this into a test system and validate functionality.
  • Restore again at cutover time.

Building new hosts is more flexible. Newer versions. Tuned for the new hypervisor and storage environment.

Automating the process can make it almost as fast as image based p2v methods.

John Mahowald
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  • Good approach but not what I want to or can even afford myself. No time to debug. No point to play with newer versions of libs. No point in rebuilding binaries that are in-house made and used there only. Legacy stuff, you know. So p2v copy is the only way I can use. – Kevin M Mar 13 '20 at 14:29
  • Rebuilding from a base OS is a useful procedure in case your images cannot be upgraded in place or no longer function. Not upgrading or testing is your choice, but does increase technical debt. – John Mahowald Mar 13 '20 at 16:34