We have a customer who has a server that runs Windows NT4. One of the hard drives on the 15 year old server started failing, so we decided to virtualize the server. To add to the complexity, the server was on a workgroup and not on the domain like all the other servers. I installed VMware Standalone Converter on the server that would host the VM, but when I started the virtualization process, I received an error saying the remote agent could not be installed.
We figured out that the latest version of VMware Standalone Converter to support NT4 was version 3.0.3-89816, which is not available for download now. Luckily, we had a version of this file already downloaded. This version is a cold clone ISO. I created a CD and attempted to run the conversion from the CD. When you boot from the CD, you can only virtualize remote systems. I tried this process from the host server and the NT4 server, but both failed. Installing the v3.0.3 on the host server and then running the conversion also fails.
Here is the process you must go through to convert an NT4 server to a remote VM: [more]
- Create a bootable CD from the VMware Standalone Converter version 3.0.3-89816
- Insert the CD in the NT4 server and browse the contents of the CD
- On the CD, navigate to the VMWARE-CONVERTER folder and run the “VMware Agent.msi” file
- After the install completes, run VMWARE-CONVERTER\converter.exe
- After the agent is installed locally, you have the option to convert the local machine
- Finish the wizard, inserting the necessary settings (VM host server, authentication, etc.)