Article Source Enterprise Networking Planet
Recently, we observed someone noting that Xen doesn’t provide the same physical-to-virtual (p2v) conversion capabilities that VMware does. Yet another reason Xen isn’t as widespread as VMware, the theory goes. The question this raises, however, is, “why is p2v even necessary?” Assume the physical hardware had instead died; would this person have had to restore configuration files and settings manually from backup?
Postulate: if you cannot tell a server (be it physical or virtual) to reinstall itself, then simply walk away knowing it will reload and return to full service, you are doing it wrong. Every network service, configuration file, and setting required for a server to function, absolutely must be automated and configured in your configuration management system…
