Share via

Migrating from VMware to Hyper-V

  • Article

During the IT Camps I’ve delivered recently either on the Private Cloud or Virtualization, there was one question I’ve heard several times : “How do I convert my existing VMs from VMware to Hyper-V ?”.

The conversion of the VMware Virtual Machines and VMware virtual disks (.vmdk) to Hyper-V virtual machines and Hyper-V virtual hard disk files (.vhd) can be done with a Solution Accelerator. The Solution Accelerator is a set of tools and guidance that helps you do the job in the efficient way.

Click here to register to Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter Beta program and download the tools 

The virtual machine converter will allow you to do the following actions :

  • Convert virtual disks from VMware format (VMDK) to Hyper-V format (VHD).
  • Convert the configuration of VMware Virtual Machines (such as memory, virtual processor and other resources).
  • Uninstall the VMware Tools on the VM and install the Hyper-V integration Tools

Please note that only the Virtual Machine Converter supports the conversion from :

  • VMware vSphere 4.1
  • VMware vSphere 5.0 (not supported by SCVMM 2012 RTM)

The tool can be used to convert running virtual machines or perform an offline conversion of VMware virtual hard disks as you can see below :

image

You can use the GUI to perform a conversion but the tool comes also with a comand line inerface (MVDC.exe) than you can use to automate your conversions.

You can also use System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) 2012 to convert VMware virtual machines into Hyper-V virtual machine. Keep in mind that you must have made the integration between SCVMM and VMware in order to be able to perform this conversion. The procedure is rather simple and explained here : https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg610672.aspx

In this configuration you can migrate from :

  • ESX/ESXi 3.5 Update 5 (not supported by the Virtual Machine Converter)
  • ESX/ESXi 4.0 (not supported by the Virtual Machine Converter)
  • ESX/ESXi 4.1

The source virtual machine can be stored in the VMM Library or managed by a VMware ESX Host.

Happy conversion from VMware to Hyper-V !

Comments

  • Anonymous
    June 12, 2012
    Hi Damien, Thanks for the post, this is a valuable post and short information, I like it! All the best!