VMware VCENTER CONVERTER EN-000158-02 - Manual (Page 14)

agent
vCenter Converter Standalone running
on Windows machine
powered-on
physical machine ESX/ESXi
copied
volumes
source destination
network
snapshot
VM
source
volumes
3 Converter Standalone completes the conversion process.
The agent installs the required drivers to allow the operating system to boot in a virtual machine and
personalizes the virtual machine, for example, changing the IP information.
agent
vCenter Converter Standalone running
on Windows machine
powered-on
physical machine ESX/ESXi
source destination
network
VM
source
volumes
snapshot
reconfiguration
customization (optional)
4 Optionally Converter Standalone uninstalls the agent from the source machine.
The virtual machine is ready to run on the destination server.
Hot Cloning of Physical Machine Sources That Are Running Linux
Conversions of physical machine sources that are running Linux differ from conversions of Windows sources.
In Windows conversions, Converter Standalone agent is deployed to the source machine and the source
information is pushed to the destination machine.
In Linux conversions, no agent is deployed on the source machine. A helper virtual machine is created instead
and deployed to the destination ESX/ESXi host. The source data is then pulled from the source Linux machine
to the helper virtual machine. After the conversion is over, the helper virtual machine shuts down to become
the target virtual machine the next time you power it on.
Converter Standalone supports converting Linux sources only to managed destinations.
User's Guide
14 VMware, Inc.