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We have an existing OS/2 Warp 4.5 computer that runs our company's voicemail system. There has been a lot of turnover in the telecomm department and currently no one knows anything about the system other than it runs stably. However, the hardware is old and in a white box clunker of a computer, of which there is no backup.

We do not have the media for an OS/2 install although we could probably get it if needed. For the software that runs on it, it's not likely this can be located easily. There is no one here who would be able to configure it from scratch.

We will at some point need to move to new hardware. Longer term, we'll get a consultant in or coming up with a new system, but shorter term, I'd like to image the hard drive and potentially migrate it to a virtual server. I see that Parallels Workstation supports virtualizing OS/2.

My question is, what would the best way of doing this migration? Are there any other concerns I might not be thinking with?

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4 Answers 4

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Your best bet is to Ghost the machine and convert the ghost image into a vmware image using their free vCenter Converter. The product works fantastic for converting physical machines into VM images, but it doesn't look like it supports OS/2.

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  • There appears to be at least some support for it running under VMware Workstation: kb.vmware.com/selfservice/microsites/…
    – Kevin Kuphal
    Aug 20, 2009 at 21:48
  • You should be able to run OS/2 under VMware Workstation. I was referring to the converter tool not specifically working for converting an OS/2 physical machine into a vmware image.
    – GregD
    Aug 20, 2009 at 22:04
  • Oh, so you can't run the converter on the OS/2 machine itself, but it should still be able to covert the image made from Ghost, and should still be able to run in VMware Workstation?
    – user17642
    Aug 20, 2009 at 22:14
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    Yes. While I haven't taken this particular route, converting a ghost image into a vmware image, is relatively easy.
    – GregD
    Aug 20, 2009 at 22:18
  • Worth a shot :)
    – user17642
    Aug 20, 2009 at 22:23
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If there is "unusual" hardware involved for talking to the phone system you will likely have trouble getting to it from within a VM.

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  • Yeah, I found that out. Looks like we're stuck with it. Luckily, it has been rock solid so far.
    – user17642
    Aug 22, 2009 at 2:37
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If Vmware converter won't install on OS/2, you can get the vCenter Converter that runs off a bootable CD so it doesn't touch the client image whatsoever. However, Vmware charge for this version (and, as usual for VMWare, the 'standalone' version is the installed hotclone plugin, the vCenter module is the one that runs off bootable CD).

Alternatively, use any backup utility to backup and then restore into a blank VM guest image.

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Ecomstation is the follow-up of OS/2 and works nice on modern systems and under Virtual PC. I heard that Virtual PC will be part of Windows 7. For some strange reason Ecomstation does not work under VMware.

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