VMware - Making my job easier

Just like the title says. VMware is making my job a lot easier. In addition to that, it has increased efficiency for my clients.

Next week, I will be upgrading an old Pentium III server running Microsoft SBS 2003 to a new Dell Poweredge 2900 w/ a 2Ghz Intel Xeon Quad Core Processor, 4GB RAM, and 5 250GB SATA drives in a RAID 5 configuration. I am also running Windows 2003 Server R2 x64. The 64 bit version of Windows will allow the server to take full advantage of the hardware and memory available. The old SBS server is their primary Active Directory Domain Controller, BES Server, and Exchange Server! Now rather than use the SBS Swing Kit to migrate the server to new hardware and use a difficult, unreliable BES migration white paper, I decided to use VMware's P2V converter.

All I need to do is download VMware Server (for free at www.vmware.com) , install VMware Server on the new server, install VMware converter, and run the converter. 4-6hrs later (depending on the size of the hard drives in the old server) the old SBS server will be migrated into a Virtual Machine onto the new server. Its that simple.

And the best thing about going virtual is that in the future if my client wants to add more servers, they can! All I need to do is create a new Virtual Machine!