Create a vm copy of Live environment servers and isolate them from the live servers

mada999

Hi folks,

I have limited knowledge in this field as I'm not a network admin.

First of all I have live servers in an ip Range 10.1.1.x

I then have client work stations on the ip range, 10.1.3.x and 10.20.1.x

I'd have some live servers at the moment hosting applications, ie application server, database server and http server.

I'd like to make a p2v copy of these servers and isolate them from the other servers and make sure that the clients can still connect to them.

Am i right in saying i should vLAn these servers into a new range such as 10.3.1.x ? How would I stop live server range connecting to them?

I have access to vsphere 5.x esxi and would also like to connect the new copied servers up to the SAN etc.

Any idea's or a general overview of what i should be looking at doing?

Thanks,

mada

BigEejit

I know in Vmware workstation when you clone a VM and then run it, it detects that it is a clone and asks you do you want a different IP address. The thing is, these clones are identical, same name, same everything and you would have to change all those otherwise you will have problems galore.

Tbh you need to test this, on a bank holiday weekend or something.

n0brain3r

Just an observation if your asking these questions and attempt this who is going to fix it should something go wrong?

I assuming this if for testing? If so why not just create a completely separate lab environment with a client to test from?

You won't have to mess with your live environment and there's no danger of you breaking something.

mada999

n0brain3r wrote: »

Just an observation if your asking these questions and attempt this who is going to fix it should something go wrong?

I assuming this if for testing? If so why not just create a completely separate lab environment with a client to test from?

You won't have to mess with your live environment and there's no danger of you breaking something.

hi there, well i'm just looking for an overview on how to build it, i'll be getting the networking guys to make the networking changes. yeah this is what I'm trying to do, make a test lab using a couple of vmhosts but i'm unsure on how on where to start.

n0brain3r

I would either copy/clone the existing VM's onto another server. Use a USB drive or restore from backup. This could be any PC form the last few years just make sure the processor supports visualization. Keep it completely separate from your production network and you don't need to worry about setting up different VLANs or the lab servers coming up on your production network.