Converting a physical Linux machine to a virtual machine fails at 1%

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:

• Physical to virtual (P2V) conversion of a Linux source machine using VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.x fails at 1%.
  
• You see the error:
  
  Error occurred while opening a virtual disk. Verify that the converter server and the running source machine have a network access to the source and destination ESX/ESXi hosts.

Environment

VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.5.x
VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.1.x

Cause

This issue occurs if the DNS records of destination ESXi host/vCenter are not resolvable at the source machine.

To determine if your MACHINE_NAME is resolvable, use nslookup from your Windows command line:

Example of a successful MACHINE_NAME lookup:

C:\>nslookup myserver

Server: dns1.mydomain.net < FQDN of DNS Server that the record resides>

Address: 10.10.10.20 <IP Address of DNS Server>

Name: myserver <Machine Name>

Address: 10.10.10.30 <Machine IP Address>

Example of an unsuccessful MACHINE_NAME lookup:

C:\>nslookup myserver

Server: dns1.mydomain.net

Address: 10.10.10.20

*** dns1.mydomain.net can't find myserver: Non-existent domain.

Resolution

To resolve this issue, add an Address record and Reverse lookup entry in the DNS server for your MACHINE_NAME.

To locate the MACHINE_NAME, open a Windows command prompt and run the hostname command.

To add an Address record and Reverse lookup entry:

1. Open DNS.
2. In the console tree, right-click the domain you want to update and click Other New Records.
3. In the Select a resource record type field, select the type of resource record you want to add.
4. Click Create Record.
5. In the New Resource Record window, work through the prompts to add the required information for the Address record and Reverse lookup.
6. Click OK to add the new record to the zone.

After adding the DNS record, ensure that you are able to resolve the MACHINE_NAME before attempting to convert again.