technical solutions and commentary

The Configuration Manager Physical to Virtual Migration Toolkit is designed to assist with migrating from Configuration Manager 2007 to Configuration Manager 2012. This tool helps with remote Configuration Manager 2007 SP2 site servers which need to be retained during the side-by-side migration to Configuration Manager 2012.

The tools enables conversion of Configuration Manager 2007 site servers to Virtual Machines (VHD) files and then restages this physical server as a Hyper-V host and then remounts the created VHD containing the SCCM 2007 Server, now a VM Guest. By converting the existing site servers into Virtual Machines at remote locations, you can re-use the same hardware (given sufficient resources) to stand-up a Configuration Manager 2012 site server and perform the side-by-side migration.

CTP release Key Features (taken directly from the Connect site):

• Task sequence\standalone media driven. Utilizes Configuration Manager 2007’s task sequences to provide the ability to automate the majority of the end-to-end P2V process, including:

• Offline virtualization of physical disks.
• Preparing the VHDs to leverage virtual storage drivers and align to virtual disk layout.
• Compressing of the VHD’s to reduce size on disk.
• Installation of Windows 2008 R2 (including enabling the Hyper-V role).
• Automating the creation of a Hyper-V virtual machine.
• Attaching the captured VHDs as a Hyper-V virtual machine.

All pre-release versions are on the Connect website which enables feedback directly to the migration toolkit development team during the Community Technology Preview phase:

https://connect.microsoft.com/ConfigurationManagervnext/program6835