Three challenges for Virtual Server migration

Old servers and their old applications are suitable for virtualization, but there are challenges in migrating these virtual servers to new hardware. By virtualizing the old operating system on new hardware, the system can be more effective, reliable, and cost-effective. However, when you move the old server to the new hardware, the virtualization hardware support, device drivers, and virtual server migration and installation processes are all hit, and you are caught off guard.

Hardware Support for legacy servers

The first problem you may encounter is that the virtual architecture may not support the operating system on the old server. Microsoft does not support DOS or Windows NT Server in both physical and virtual environments. For old operating systems, you should use supported configurations because physical hardware has not supported many old operating systems for many years.

If you plan to migrate virtual servers to machines running Windows NT or DOS, you cannot perform physical to virtual P2V migration. Instead, you must manually perform the virtual server migration process.

Device Driver Problems

Generally, when you install the operating system on a virtual machine, the virtualization platform uses Microsoft's Hyper-V Integration Service or VMware Tools to provide the operating system using the driver, so as to identify the virtualization hardware.

However, these enlightened tools cannot work with old operating systems. Your only choice is the simulation driver. The simulation driver forces the virtual machine to imitate the existing widely supported hardware devices. Hyper-V can imitate the NE2000 Nic, which can be good luck in Windows NT, DOS, Windows 2000 and other operating systems.

Old servers must be manually installed

Depending on the operating system running on the old server, you may not be able to perform full backup and recovery before the migration. Instead, you need to manually install the operating system for the new virtual machine, manually install the application, back up application data, and restore to the new virtual machine.

It is difficult to manually install the old operating system and applications for the old server. The first challenge in the virtual server migration process is to find the installation media. Unfortunately, depending on the operating system and application service life, they may still be in a floppy disk or a CD that cannot be started.

The old Windows NT Server exists in a CD that cannot be started. You need to start the startup process from three floppy disks. If you lose or destroy a floppy disk, you can also copy the Windows NT installation file to the server's hard drive and run the WINNT/B command. However, you need to start the server to the DOS environment.

The main virtualization platforms support both the soft drive and the USB soft drive, but the installation may take some trouble. For example, Hyper-V and VMware do not allow virtual machines to directly use a soft drive. Instead, you must use a virtual floppy disk file.

As you can see, there are many ways to migrate old servers to a virtual architecture. To avoid virtual server migration problems, Test Virtual Machine deployment in the virtual test environment. In this way, you will be impressed with the migration of virtual servers to solve the problems caused by the old operating system.