Last week I was migrating some servers from ESX 3.02 to a vSphere 5 cluster, after importing the the exported VM’s I received this error message:

The device or operation specified at index ’2′ is not supported for the current virtual machine version ‘vmx-04′.  A minimum version of ‘vmx-06′ is required for this operation to succeed.

A general system error occurred: Invalid fault

Solution:

The VMware Converter I used was version 4.3.0 build-292238

After installing VMware Converter 5.0.0 build-470252 I was able to start the import virtual machine in the new vSphere 5 cluster

The import finished successfully

Last year I posted an article about the “Proliant Support Pack Cleaner” (PSP), last month I did 28 P2V’s migrations and this software was really helpful. During the VMware Converter Wizard I disabled on the “destination server” the HP PSP Startup services, after the P2V process I runned the PSP Cleaner to remove drivers, services etc.

Guillermo Musumeci released in 08/11/2010 version 1.5

Support both x86 and x64 versions of HP Proliant Support Pack.

Run in Unattended mode using /NOGUI parameter.

To run HP Proliant Support Pack Cleaner, you must run as administrator, or disable UAC on Windows 2008.

Software: Download

I’m working on a project to P2V a bunch of servers to a vSphere environment, In the list of servers to P2V I’ve one USB (Hasp Keys) based license server.. to P2V this server we need a TCP/IP USB Hub to connect remotely the Hasp Key. We bought Digi AnywhereUSB/5

AnywhereUSB Device configuration:

^ Setup a new root password

^ Setup a Static IP Address

^ Install the latest firmware

Read more…

After migrating the last Linux Suse Enterprise 32-bit physical machine with VMware Converter Standalone 4.3 I received a error:

FAILED: Unable to obtain the IP address of the helper virtual machine

Solution:

The solution is simple, by converting the physical machine to a virtual machine the VM will start directly. By starting the VM the mounted Converter ISO will boot with a VM HelperNetwork. In case you’re VLAN doesn’t have DHCP functionality you need to configure a static IP for the VM HelperNetwork.

To  assign a static IP address to the Helper virtual machine, select Use the following IP address: and specify the IP address, subnet mask, and default gateway. Be sure the IP address you specify for the Helper virtual machine is not already in use on the network. 
     
(Optional) To configure the DNS server address manually, select Use the following DNS server address: and type the preferred DNS server address. Optionally, type and alternate DNS server address. 
    
Select another option to set or click Next to view a summary of the conversion task. Converter Standalone uses the IP address and DNS server you specified to copy data from the source Linux machine to the destination virtual machine during conversion.

The VM will boot with the configured network settings:

P2V status:

I started today with some P2V migrations to a vSphere 4.1 environment, after finished the P2V wizard in VMware Converter Standalone the migration started, but… received after 1% completion the following error:

FAILED: MethodFault.summary

Solution:

I used VMware Converter version 4.0.1 build-161434, VMware KB is telling me to upgrade to VMware Converter version 4.3, tried again.. with success