My friend and fellow MVP John Paul Cook recently blogged about a cool new tool from Microsoft called Disk2Vhd, at http://sqlblog.com/blogs/john_paul_cook/archive/2009/10/09/physical-to-virtual-conversion-disk2vhd.aspx.
The tool enables you to migrate a physical machine (PM) into a virtual machine (VM), while the PM is running. You can find Dsik2Vhd at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/ee656415.aspx.
John also has great information about VM migration at http://sqlblog.com/blogs/john_paul_cook/archive/2009/08/29/migrating-a-virtual-machine-from-virtual-pc-to-hyper-v-and-back.aspx.
Note that John's content relates to Hyper-V. So if you're looking for VMWare tools, keep looking. Of course, if you find similar free tools for VMWare, let us know by posting here!
Thanks,
-Kev
Twitter @kekline
More content at http://KevinEKline.com