I've done it, it's pretty trivial. I did mine manually but there are several utilities to the heavy lifting as far as mass storage drivers etc...
Keep in mind that as time goes by if the version of the store changes you're vm likely won't be updated and also its account will age if its left off (which it will have to obviously). You might just want to be proactive and mitigate this now with a migration... From: Shih, Henry [mailto:hms...@ci.livermore.ca.us] Sent: Monday, May 10, 2010 1:53 PM To: MS-Exchange Admin Issues Subject: p2v on production Exchange server (a physical Dell server) What do you think? The hardware warranty on our 2003 Exchange server will be expired soon and can't be renewed. The idea is to make a "copy" of the server (perform a p2v) at VMware. In case of Dell server failure, we can restore the information store onto that virtual server (the copy) and put it into production. We can have at least a identical server to restore the database quickly without fixing the physical server. Thanks. Henry Shih System Administrator www.ci.livermore.ca.us<http://www.ci.livermore.ca.us>
