Fully Automating P2V Migration for Software Assurance in ConfigMgr

?I’ve had this topic on my to-do list for a few months now. I presented on P2V Migration at a customer day we hosted at Thames Valley Park in February. My hesitation came from not really knowing how much to cover in terms of the blog. I’m going to try and keep it short and sweet and focus on particulars that pertain to ConfigMgr, as there numerous posts already available giving and overview and introduction to P2V. If you’re not familiar with P2V for Software Assurance you can read up on it here https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg180733.aspx

 Whilst I was preparing for my presentation I had one major blocker to the demo I was setting up. Once the Windows 7 Deployment had occurred the Old Applications were failing to port from Windows XP to Windows 7. Manual intervention was necessary to log on to the Windows XP VM in order to allow the scripts to run.

The reason for this was that in order for a fully automated migration to occur the task sequence needed to configure auto logon on the pre-existing Windows XP box.

The way to achieve this automation, I discovered was to set a Task Sequence variable prior to the P2V capture running. Create the task sequence variable with the name “AdminPassword” and during the capture VHD step the Local Admin Password on the Source Box will be set to whatever value you specify.

 The same value will then be written in to the registry to allow the automatic logon necessary to not require user interaction when the task sequence attempts to pull the Windows XP applications across.

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This post was contributed by Rob York, a Premier Field Engineer with Microsoft Premier Field Engineering, UK.