If you used
tar to backup the entire system, you would need to put it back the data on a system with appropriate filesystems already mounted, that way
tar will write them to the correct slice of disk.
If you are planning to restore everything and the backup was made with
tar -cvf device / then you can only restore to the exact path. You will also need to make sure you don't overwrite OS critical files or your machine may not boot or fail to work properly.
Can you elaborate more on how you did the copy?
Again,
Storix would be an excellent tool here (if it supports your OS version) and it would allow you to take a backup of your physical server that you can use to create a virtual server
and update the disk allocations at the same time. It will help you go P2P, P2V, V2V & V2P.
I have to confirm that I have no financial interest in it, I just think it's a very good product. There are others available, but this one seems to do far more in a far more useful way. To be honest it exceeds what HP-UX's Ignite and AIX's
mysysb do by adding in the ability to adjust various things (storage, network etc.) when you start the recovery. Take the free trial, watch the videos and choose for yourself.
Also have a look at the IBM view of it
IBM - Storix System Backup Administrator (SBAdmin) for AIX
Kind regards,
Robin
(Never employed, contracted or bribed by Storix or IBM)