How to P2V Windows 2008 R2 to ESX 3.5

Author: NetworkadminKB.com
Created: 2010-09-15
Modified: 2010-09-15

Issue:

When converting a physical Windows 2008 R2 computer to a virtual machine (P2V) using Converter Enterprise Agent you receive the following error message.

 

Failed to take snapshot of a source volume.  Possible causes include not having any NTFS volumes on Windows XP or Windows 2003, and not having enough free disk space.

 

The following event shows in the Windows 2008 Event log.

Event ID: 22

Source: VSS

Description:

Volume Shadow Copy Service error: A critical component required by the Volume Shadow Copy service is not registered. This might happened if an error occurred during Windows setup or during installation of a Shadow Copy provider. The error returned from CoCreateInstance on class with CLSID {e579ab5f-1cc4-44b4-bed9-de0991ff0623} and Name IVssCoordinatorEx2 is [0x80040154, Class not registered].

 

Operation:

   Instantiating VSS server

 

Cause:

Reports of the underlying cause vary, typical examples

• Windows 2008 R2 is not supported in Converter Enterprise
• Windows 2008 R2 has a 100mb partition created for use with Bitlocker
• VSS not starting, or other VSS issues.
• Hard drive corruption
• Resizing the volumes during the conversion (P2V) 

Solution:

The only solution that I found to work was to download and install vConverter Standalone v4.0.3 on the Windows 2008 R2 server.  Then use this utility to perform the P2V conversion.  The utility is free.

 

https://www.vmware.com/products/converter/overview.html

 

I was able to convert my Windows 2008 R2 without issue using vConverter Standalone, which leads me to believe there is an issue with Converter Enterprise Agent.  The target environment was:

• ESX 3.5 U5
• Virtual Center 2.5 U6

 

More Information:

http://communities.vmware.com/thread/229998