Take the 2-minute tour ×  I have a windows server 2003 box that
I want to virtualize for free if possible. My understanding is
that VMware's ESXi is free. Is there a free way to create the
image? What are the steps necessary to do this?  share|improve
this question  4 Answers 4  up vote 3 down vote accepted  You
want to use either VMware Converter Standalone or Visioncore
vConverter to P2V your current boxes. The process isn't all that
difficult - you'll need to:    • Install ESXi on a decent brand-
name server (not all white boxes are compatible).   • Install
the converter of your choice on your workstation.   • Walk
through the conversion.   • Power off the physical server.   •
Power up the new Virtual server. A few notes:   • The conversion
is run completely from your workstation. This is important,
because the better your workstation the faster the conversion.
It's all about the amount of data, but a decent estimation is
about 5-10 minutes per gig of data on the physical server. That
might even be a little