Playing around with LeoStream P2V

A while ago I talked about how to manually migrate a physical computer to a virtual machine. Now - there are a number of automated tools to perform physical to virtual migrations (called 'P2V') - however most of them only support server operating systems. Recently I had a chance to try out LeoStream's P2V tool - which supports Windows 2000 and Windows XP professional (as well as all of the server flavors) - and let me say that I was very impressed.

My eventual aim was to get an old K6-500 running Windows XP on a 30GB disk into a Virtual PC virtual machine - with the least effort possible. As such - not only did I use this P2V tool - but I tried to read as small an amount of the documentation as possible. 

First - I needed to have Virtual Server installed on my target system (no problem). Then I needed to install their 'host agent' on my target system. This was very straight forward - and left me with a LeoStream service running on my box. Finally I had to install the P2V Wizard on the computer I wanted to migrate. This was very simple - and after asking me a few questions (what network configuration I wanted, etc) it was off an running.

Two hours later (and with no intervention from me) the system was merrily running in a virtual machine - which I could run directly under Virtual PC with no changes. In fact - the only nit-pick I could find with the process was that it did not automatically install the Virtual Machine Additions for me.

Now - at $200 per successful migration - the price is a bit steep. But given that you have guaranteed success with no frustration or wasted time - it is pretty tempting. For more details - checkout: https://www.leostream.com/productPV.html

Cheers,
Ben