Yes it works and I have first hand experience with this on a routine basis.  Please make sure that your Windows licensing supports this though as you do not want to break the EULA of the Windows license you are transferring from a VM to a physical machine.

1) Don't install vmware tools on your image though, that is not good for physical hardware.  

2) Your virtual base image needs to be based on the same type of bios as your deployment system (if you are pushing to a GPT and/or UEFI system, your vm should be based on that and vice versa for legacy/bios systems unless your physical hardware supports both and is properly configured in the bios already).  

3) If this is an Active Directory environment where you will be deploying your images, make sure that you Sysprep your image and power off the VM, then boot the VM directly into your Acronis bootable recovery media (a mounted iso in the vm) and be sure to take the image before it boots back into Windows.

4) Take an image of your VM system and save it somewhere that is easily accessible (Acronis can mount images from network shares if you supply credentials, or push it to an extenral hard drive)

5) After you restore to your physical machinie, you will most likley need to then use Acronis Universal Restore to generalize the hardware (if the wrong drivers are in the base image or the necessary drivers are not on the base image, you'll get a blue screen (BSOD) - this will especially occur if you have a different processor or chipset and/or if one system was set to boot as RAID in the bios and the other is set to boot as AHCI and/or SATA).  Universal restore resets the system drivers to generic windows drivers which allows your system to boot and then you can manually update drivers once booted into Windows.  FYI... if using RAID on the physical machine, you would slip in the raid controller drivers with universal restore at this time as well - RAID controllers need the drivers before booting into Windows so this is important if you are using RAID).

Worse case, if you're unable to make it work (which you should be able to) you have 30 days from purchase to request a refund.  I am just a forum member so that is something you would coordinate with Acronis, but this is their posted return policy at this time. 

http://www.acronis.com/en-us/homecomputing/sales/retail/refund/index.ht…

Within 30 days of your Home product download purchase, you may request a full refund from Acronis for any reason. We cannot accept returns more than 30 days after your purchase. To return software download to us, please submit a request to Acronis Customer Service with your order details. Please mind that Acronis refunds only purchases of Home and Home Office products. Acronis cannot refund purchases made at retail outlets. Please refer to the retail outlet's refund policy on this matter.

Thanks for the reply.

To make sure that I am following you correctly, you're saying that it works. However, when I tried to boot the guest OS from Acronis boot media, it didn't read it well from USB flash. Also, I tried a DVD disc but still doesn't work.  I also tried to boot the VM from Acronis media ISO. .. What exactly are the steps of taking an image from a guest OS using Acronis boot media?

I'm not sure about other virtual applicatoins, but in VMWare, even before you power on a virtual host, you can select different hardware features - to include a CD rom and virtual .iso.  I'd recommend that in this case and see if that works any better. Depending on what virtual application you are using, I'm not sure how well it will boot fromo a virtual USB and/or if you're sharing physical USB ports with it, if you've selected USB3 or USB2 for the virtual controller. If using USB3 for the virtual controller, try using USB2 instead, but hopefully using the .iso will be easier anyway.

You probably alredy know this but here is a guide for mounting a virtual iso in VMWare and booting from it..

http://www.isunshare.com/blog/how-to-set-vmware-boot-from-iso-image-fil…

Dear Bobbo,

I really have no clue what you're talking about here. I was very clear enough in my previous postings about what virtual app I am using. I just said I am using VMware and I tried to boot an Acronis ISO media by mounting that ISO in the VM. Of course, I know how to mount ISO images in VMware before powering on. I am using virtualization since 2005. I find your link on how to mount images is a bit offending.

My question is, How to take an OS image from a guest OS? ... I don't know how to simplify the question more. I've tried to boot from CD, USB2/3, and ISO image with no luck. Acronis media environment should be booted in order to take that image. I couldn't boot to that environment. What should I do?

And because we are using the word "IMAGES" too much,  let's not confuse an ISO image with a TIB image. What I am talking about here is taking an OS TIB image.

Hello Ahmed,

I think Bobbo just misunderstood your quesiton due to language differences.  You should not take it offensively.

Please describe what happens when you attempt to boot to the Acronis media environment?  Do you get a black screen with blinking cursor?  Just a black screen?  etc..

Often times a non boot is simply a bios setting in the machine being used, tell us a bit more about your machine, UEFI booted or Legacy bios?  If UEFI do you have Secure Boot enabled?

Give as many details as possible so that we can make an informed response.

Thanks.

Dear Enchantech,

I am not booting from my machine. I stated that I want to boot a VM (Virtual Machine) to Acronis environment. From your question, you also seems didn't understand my requirement. I want to take an OS image from a VM (guest) OS not MY MACHINE. No black screen! Just Windows OS of the guest resumes loading. You can't access the BIOS of the VM because it is pointless. BIOS is vital in the host machine.

Isn't still clear?

Ahmed, let's all take a deep breath and work together.  As forum members, we're here to try and provide assistance, but we are regular users like you, not Acronis employees - we are donating our personal time and knowledge because we like to help others and learn things in the process as well.  Keeping that in mind, you're more likely to receive help if you work nicely with forum members.  

I understand your question, but have no background knowledge of your experience and capabilities with VMWare or Acronis and prefer to start with small steps when responding - there is no offense intended with my response, only an attempt to gather more information about your unique situation so that someone can better assist you.  

As a knowledgeable VMware user who already knows how to mount a virtual .ISO, have you actually tried this yet to see if you can get to the Acronis offline bootable media enviornment?  When you mount the virtual .ISO of your recoverable media, you can boot to it just like you would on a physical piece of hardware.  The VMWare bios is pretty limited, but if you're quick enough, you can press ESC or F1 to get into the BIOS before your host OS boots up and from there, you can change the boot order so that the virtual CDROM has boot priority, which will make this easier in the future.  

Once you've gotten that far, you'll be in the Acronis Bootable Media menu and then you'd take an image of your virtual machine hard drive, just like you would on a physical machine.  It should detected your virtual hard drive and then you can then proceed to take an Acronis .TIB image and save it to your desired location so that you can later push it to physical hardware.  

However, please keep in mind that the free Acronis Trial does have limitations and does not support recovery to different hardware systems so you won't be able to actually accomplish this without purchasing a license first.  Acronis does have a 30 day return policy though so if you are unasatisifed, you can request a refund.  Assuming you do like the product, because it does support what you are wanting to do with it, you'll be able to push the .TIB image crated from your virtual host OS to a new physical device.  At that point, you may then need to run Universal Restore on the physical box to generalize the drivers.