V2P – Virtual machine migration to a physical machine
V2P (virtual to physical) migration means converting a functional, existing virtual machine to a physical one.
Acronis Backup Cyber Backup software creates disk images that can be restored when needed. With the Universal Restore add-on, it is also possible to create a backup of a functioning system and restore it to a virtual computer, a physical machine, or even a physical machine with different hardware.
Converting a virtual machine to a physical one – V2P migration using Acronis
To convert a virtual machine to physical hardware, you need one of the Acronis Backup Cyber Backup products + the Universal Restore add-on. The Acronis Universal Restore add-on allows you to replace the computer's basic drivers during backup recovery (the so-called HAL layer, or hardware abstraction layer, which creates a unified interface on the computer) and also lets you provide your own drivers. This ensures that the machine does not crash after recovery. If recovery were performed without this add-on, the physical machine would use the virtual machine's drivers, which cannot work with actual hardware, and the system would crash before startup.
The procedure is as follows:
- Use one of the Acronis Backup Cyber Backup products to create a backup of the virtual machine. You can either install the program directly on the virtual computer and create a backup, or boot the virtual computer from Acronis bootable media and create a backup of the virtual machine from that environment.
- Store the backup so that it is also accessible to the physical machine to which you want to transfer the virtual machine system. This means that the backup should be stored, for example, on an external drive, network drive, shared network storage, or removable media (e.g., CD, DVD).
- Boot the physical machine using Acronis bootable media with the Acronis Universal Restore add-on. Select recovery of the backup created on the virtual computer.
- Choose to use the Universal Restore add-on and, if necessary, add your own drivers. Perform the recovery.
- After recovery, remove the Acronis bootable media from the drive and restart the machine.
- An exact copy of the virtual machine should now work on the physical machine.