3/4/2019 Linux P2V With DD and VHDTool – EASY and CHEAP!

HDTool – EASY and CHEAP! – John Kelbley's real life enterprise interop and administration

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Linux P2V With DD and VHDTool – EASY and

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JohnKelbley (https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprise_admin/author/johnkelbley/) May 13, 2010

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Comments (9)

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Anonymous
February 21, 2019 at 5:34 am (https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprise_admin/2010/05/13/linux-
p2v-with-dd-and-vhdtool-easy-and-cheap/#comment-83)
Worked perfectly on my CentOS 6.3 server, thanks !
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JohnKelbley
February 21, 2019 at 5:34 am (https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprise_admin/2010/05/13/linux-
p2v-with-dd-and-vhdtool-easy-and-cheap/#comment-203)
Yes, that would be super, but since Linux does not have VSS support, that's not going to happen any time
soon!

Using DD and VHDTool is almost as easy (could only be easier if Windows was the source Operating System
and disk2VHD was usable!).

-John

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hassan sayed issa20014 (https://social.technet.microsoft.com/profile/hassan+sayed+issa20014)

February 21, 2019 at 5:34 am (https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprise_admin/2010/05/13/linux-
p2v-with-dd-and-vhdtool-easy-and-cheap/#comment-223)
thanks

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Anonymous
February 21, 2019 at 5:34 am (https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprise_admin/2010/05/13/linux-
p2v-with-dd-and-vhdtool-easy-and-cheap/#comment-1033)
I used DD to img my linux server ,it's 589GB. what should I do? thx

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tonyr
May 28, 2010 at 4:55 pm (https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprise_admin/2010/05/13/linux-p2v-
with-dd-and-vhdtool-easy-and-cheap/#comment-1053)
we need a linux version of disk2vhd!

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p2v-with-dd-and-vhdtool-easy-and-cheap%2F)

youfoobar
February 5, 2012 at 1:44 am (https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprise_admin/2010/05/13/linux-p2v-
with-dd-and-vhdtool-easy-and-cheap/#comment-593)
I followed this awesome guide but came across a few roadblocks along the way. I posted my troubles and
what I did to get a locked down linux distro into hyper-v here: youfoobar.wordpress.com
(http://youfoobar.wordpress.com/)

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RODNEY
September 2, 2012 at 3:27 am (https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprise_admin/2010/05/13/linux-
p2v-with-dd-and-vhdtool-easy-and-cheap/#comment-343)
This was a very useful bit of info, thanks. I did kind of lose a lot of respect when I saw a Miley Cyrus Linux
Background, however.

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achomjak
April 24, 2013 at 7:15 pm (https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprise_admin/2010/05/13/linux-p2v-
with-dd-and-vhdtool-easy-and-cheap/#comment-173)
followed the above network example but the booted vhd file cannot find a valid partition.

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Roy
April 4, 2014 at 8:02 pm (https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/enterprise_admin/2010/05/13/linux-p2v-
with-dd-and-vhdtool-easy-and-cheap/#comment-903)
Something simple that worked for me using Windows Server 2012 R2 with Hyper-V is to take the physical
Linux disk and put it into the Windows Server 2012 machine (I did via USB3), then in Hyper-V Manager
under Actions in the top right column click New -> Hard Disk -> then go through the menu. I made Disk
format=VHD, Disk Type=Dynamic, Then in Configure Disk choose Copy the contents of a physical disk and
then choose your Linux disk from the list it gives. Once you click finish on that menu it will start making the
VHD. A progress bar will show the progress. It took about an hour for a 100GB drive. Then I attached the
new VHD to a Hyper-V VM and it booted right up. It had to reboot itself to adjust to the new "hardware"
settings but has seemed to work well so far. Installed the Linux Integration Service after it was running. I did
it with CentOS 6.3

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