2008 R2 HyperV Host P2V Conversion

[Damien1234]

I have a physical Windows 2008 R2 server with two major roles: SQL Server, HyperV host. On this server I have installed the most recent version of Veeam Agent for Windows and performed a full backup.

I need to virtualize the physical box. I do not need to virtualize the guest VM as I can copy the VHD elsewhere and create a new guest on a new host.

If I make a full backup of the host can I run a P2V utility on that backup then run the host as a VM without anything freaking out due to the now nested guest VM? Basically I'm looking for a process to make this happen while minimizing downtime.

Thoughts?

[HannesK]

Hello,
just to clarify: you have installed a SQL server on directly on the Hyper-V console?

From my point of view, that requires that you setup a new SQL server in a VM and migrate the databases. I would not do a P2V of this unsupported setup.

Can you describe what you mean with "P2V utility"? Veeam Agent for Windows supports bare metal restore (where a VM can be the "metal") and you could do an instant recovery to VMware or Hyper-V. But I'm not sure, whether this works if you try that with a Hyper-V machine... As said earlier, I would do that.

What is your virtualization platform?

Best regards,
Hannes

[Damien1234]

Yes I inherited a mess. Yes, SQL server 2012 is installed directly on the HyperV host. Apparently there is a disk export wizard that is part of the Veeam Agent for Windows that can be used to turn a backup file into a VHD.

[HannesK]

yes, but I do not believe that that export wizard can help you. I would go with a clean SQL installation and just restore the database with SQL built-in tools.