Considerations before conversion

Converting a UEFI-based machine

Virtual machines that use Unified Extensible Hardware Interface (UEFI) are currently supported in VMware ESXi 5 only. If the target virtualization platform is ESXi 5, Acronis Backup creates a UEFI-based machine. Otherwise, the resulting machine will use the BIOS boot firmware.

Acronis Backup adjusts the Windows boot mode to the BIOS boot firmware and ensures that Windows remains bootable.

For Linux operating systems, changing the boot mode from UEFI to BIOS is not supported. When converting a UEFI-based machine running Linux, make sure that it uses GRUB version 1 and that the target virtualization platform is ESXi 5. For more details, see "Support for UEFI-based machines".

Logical and dynamic volumes

The resulting machine will have basic volumes, even if Linux logical volume structure is present in the backup. The same applies to dynamic volumes used in Windows systems. If you want to recreate logical or dynamic volumes on the machine, perform the conversion as described in “Recovery to a manually created virtual machine”.

Custom loader reactivation

During conversion, the disk interfaces may be changed as a result of migration to a different platform or just manually. The software sets the system-disk interface to be the same as the default interface for the new platform. The default interface is SCSI for VMware and IDE for other supported platforms. If the system disk interface changes, the name of the boot device also changes, while the boot loader still uses the old name.
Conversion of logical volumes to basic ones may also prevent the system from booting up.

For these reasons, if the machine uses a custom boot loader, you might need to configure the loader to point to the new devices and reactivate it. Configuring GRUB is normally not needed because Acronis Backup does this automatically. Should the need arise, use the procedure described in "How to reactivate GRUB and change its configuration".

For more considerations about physical to virtual machine conversion, see the "Backing up virtual machines" document.