When it comes to migrating physical servers to virtual machines, many IT pros have found getting there is not half the fun. Too often, the conversion process is frustrating, confusing and time-consuming. To help with this challenge, Vizioncore, the market leader in management tools for virtual infrastructure environments, today announced the availability of a “Top 10 Tips for a Successful P2V Server Migration” brief (full article is available at www.vizioncore.com/p2v).

The brief is based on Vizioncore’s experience from thousands of successful server conversions and presents tips for managing the process and selecting the solution that best meets organizational requirements. Highlights of the brief include:

1. Assess immediate and future needs - scalability and speed are two of the biggest differentiators among conversion solutions - understand current and future needs.

2. Establish timelines, deadlines and budgets - total conversion time and simultaneous conversion capacity of different approaches are important considerations.

3. Assess skills - personnel and budget questions can't be answered until you determine whether your staff has the skills and time to execute the conversion.

4. Set a success rate goal - determine how many failed conversions you can withstand, set a success rate goal, and use it to help evaluate options.

5. Learn the options and their limitations - there are four basic approaches to P2V conversions, and each is effective in specific use cases, and each has limitations.

6. Estimate the total time of each method – more than one approach might seem appropriate, but there is likely a big difference in how much time each approach requires.

7. Prep servers to streamline the conversion process - conversion times go down and success rates go up when physical servers are effectively prepared in advance.

8. Automate execution as much as possible - executing each conversion step takes from 30 minutes to 20 hours – the time required impacts project cost and deadlines.

9. Verify and test - the complexity of preparation and conversion creates opportunities for error – newly-converted virtual machines must be tested to ensure success.

10. Repeat as necessary - the method must be repeatable. Some solutions have features to eliminate the redundancy for converting dozens or hundreds of physical servers.

“There are many approaches for converting physical servers to a virtual environment, but practical options sharply decline as the size of the project grows,” said Jason Mattox, VP of Support and Product Development for Vizioncore. “For large-scale server migrations, staff time is often the most expensive element of the virtualization project. Expertise and availability are also common constraints. Organizations must consider the end-to-end conversion time when evaluating different approaches and determine which tasks they need their conversion solution to handle. By considering and managing these variables, organizations can select the most efficient solution for their needs.”

The complete article titled “10 Tips for a Successful P2V Server Migration” is available at www.vizioncore.com/p2v.