Migrate physical machine to VM

Lukazy

Dabbler
Joined
Jun 25, 2017
Messages
11
Hi there,

im running a Ubuntu (Server 18.04.1 LTS) machine on physical Hardware and would like to move it over to FreeNAS (running FreeNAS-11.2-RELEASE ) as a VM since I will be upgrading my FreeNAS System with better CPU/RAM so I can virtualize ;) and get rid of one physical machine that take up precious space.

Is it possible to somehow migrate/copy over the install from the physical drive to a FreeNAS VM (would also run Ubuntu Server 18.04.1 LTS) ?
And if so, what are the steps needed to do so?

The machine is currently running Mailarchiva (https://www.mailarchiva.com/) for E-Mail achrive needs and would like to just move it from physical hardware o a VM without setting up the thing again as it took me quite some time to get it to the point where it is now.

regards
Lukazy
 
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Joined
Feb 2, 2016
Messages
574
In my experience, trying to convert a physical machine into a virtual machine is more far trouble than it is worth. There are always 'minor' problems, always glitches, always configuration issues. When all is said and done, it would have been quicker and FAR cleaner to install from scratch whenever I've tried to do a P2V conversion.

Cheers,
Matt
 

Lukazy

Dabbler
Joined
Jun 25, 2017
Messages
11
for a windows machine I would be one your side 100% ;) that is just a pain in the A** but I thought maybe with Ubuntu and linux in general there would be an option to do so.
 

Mlovelace

Guru
Joined
Aug 19, 2014
Messages
1,111
If you are trying to avoid reinstalling everything, just back up the Linux machine, then do a baremetal recovery from the backup into the Linux VM.

Veeam Agent for Linux
https://www.veeam.com/linux-backup-free.html

Read the user docs to see what I'm talking about. It's free, and I've been using Veeam for our VMware environment and physical servers for about 8 years now without issues.

Edit: first link was wrong for some reason. It's okay now.
 
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