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Convert SBS 2008 to Hyper-v VM Machine without killing the server

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Hoping the forum could provide me with some guidance and how to do this with SBS version.

Scenario: SBS 2008 was installed on hardware with RAID 1 drives (2) housing OS and data. Now, we need to run SBS 2008 as a Hyper-v machine on the SAME server. I know I will need to install Hyper-v server or Windows 2008 (r2) as the parent os and create a VM under it for SBS 2008.

Here is what I am not clear about:

1. Can I take the current OS on RAID 1 and create a .vhd or .iso file that I can use to instantiate the new VM so that it comes up just as it was? If so, exactly how?
2. I thought I might toss in another drive onto the RAID Controller and create the new parent OS on that, using the existing RAID drives to simply attach them to the new VM SBS 2008 server. Two issues concern me: a) how do I get the new drive to be the boot drive on the RAID contoller (Dell T310), and can I attach a RAID 1 set of 250GB drives to the VM machine?
3. Am I missing a rather obvious way to accomplish this?
4. The fact that the SBS environment contains Exchange and SQL databases might present a backup/restore issue in going to a .vhd or .iso. Is this something I need to be concerned about?

Thanks in advance.

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Hello Larry,

Thank you for posting and welcome to our forum! I would like to help you with your questions.

From the information that you have provided about your setup, I can recommend the following solution for your scenario.

1. Create a full backup of your SBS 2008 with the VSS option enabled. This will ensure that your Exchange and SQL databases are properly backed up and you can restore them afterward. Please check this article for more information. Alternatively, you can convert your backup archive to a virtual machine file. You can read more about it here.

2. Install Windows 2008 R2 with the Hyper-V server.

3. Create a new virtual machine on the Hyper-V server.

4. Use an Acronis recovery CD to boot the new virtual machine and recover the SBS 2008 image using the Acronis Universal Restore component. Please check this article for more information about using Acronis Universal Restore. Or, you can attach the converted virtual machine file (step 1) to your Hyper-V server.

I would really appreciate if you could get back to me in case you have additional questions.

Thank you.