Migrating from virtual to physical

Eric sent me this question: "Do you know if it's possible to migrate a virtual machine to a physical one using ADS or any other tool?"

Unfortunately, I don't know of an easy way to migrate a virtual machine to a physical one, Eric, nor do I know of any tools. The issue is fixing the hardware-dependent system files. Because the hardware of a physical computer may be (or probably is) different than the hardware emulated by the virtual machine, you may need to swap system files that depend on the emulated hardware of the virtual machine for other files that will allow the operating system to run on the hardware of the physical computer. The system files include certain HAL and kernel files. You also may need to swap storage drivers needed for the operating system to boot correctly on the physical hardware. For more information about the hardware emulated by virtual machines, see "Emulated hardware" in the Virtual Server 2005 Administrator's Guide. If you want some background information on the issues, read the documentation I wrote for Virtual Server 2005 Migration Toolkit (VSMT). It's installed when you install VSMT (go to https://www.microsoft.com/windowsserversystem/virtualserver/evaluation/vsmt.mspx).

The "gotcha" about swapping system files is that Microsoft won't support the OS if you've changed its HAL file. If you use VSMT, the migration is supported, but not if you do it manually.

-Megan