Move physical 2003 Small Business Server to a VM on a 2012 Standard R2 server

[Fardringle]

I want to take a tired old Small Business Server 2003 machine that is hosting some application files and databases and put it into a virtual machine on a 2012 Standard R2 server so that it can continue to host those databases without needing to keep the old dinosaur 2003 machine running. I found this article on the TechNet site. Is it really this simple, or are there any other preparation steps (or potential problems) that I need to be aware of?

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb740912.aspx

 

[PliotronX]

Oh wow, I did not know about the wizard, Ive used disk2vhd and repairing the installation within the VM which works cake but that would be even easier. The beauty is you can experiment without screwing things up. I <3 virtual OS.

 

[riahc3]

I want to take a tired old Small Business Server 2003 machine that is hosting some application files and databases and put it into a virtual machine on a 2012 Standard R2 server so that it can continue to host those databases without needing to keep the old dinosaur 2003 machine running. I found this article on the TechNet site. Is it really this simple, or are there any other preparation steps (or potential problems) that I need to be aware of?

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb740912.aspx

This process runs a (semi) sysprep on the source machine so yes, once you do this, it should be good to go.

 

[Dahak]

Or you can look at any some of the P2V converters as well