I had the opportunity to use Platespin migrate to P2V a server across a WAN. From the get go, the product doesn’t disappoint. It’s fairly easy to figure out with lots of options including thin provisioning disks and post migration synchronization. For hot conversion, synchronization option is a must especially with servers that host databases.

The P2V migration process is pretty straight forward:

1. Discover the systems you want to P2V and the ESXi hosts that are going to be used

2. The target virtual machine is created once you intiate the P2V migration process

3. The data is then copied over to the target virtual machine

4. Virtual Machine is then configured with the parameters that are defined during the P2V wizard. Such parameters include; hostname, IP address, VMware Tools Installation, etc

Aside from the vCenter converter, I definitely recommend to try this product!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VM6hR_zqG0c