Hi,

Now that Hyper-V seems to be working for us, we have several vmware image that I would like to convert over. Is this possible?

Regards,

Peter

Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Manager provides the ability to convert VMware virtual machines into the VHD format. Yes, SCVMM only works with Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1 today, but the VHD format is common between Virtual Server and Hyper-V. After using SCVMM to convert, you can load the virtual machine into Virtual Server and remove the VM additions. Then you can move the VHD file over to Hyper-V. If the virtual machine is either Windows Server 2008 or Windows Server 2003 SP2, you can add the integration components under Hyper-V.

FYI - Once you have converted the VMWare files into .VHD format, here is a simple How-To for importing into Hyper-V

• Proposed as answer by Alberto Dorna Tuesday, September 17, 2013 1:52 PM

Make sure that you select Adapter: IDE 0 Device: 0 under Virtual Device Node whilecreating the new disk (otherwise you might end up with yet another SCSI disk)

4) Boot up your virtual machine with both drives connected and check that it detects your new IDE drive (along with a primary IDE channel and a disk device driver). You should be able to see the new drive as "not initialized" in Disk Management.

5) Power off your virtual machine and remove the newly createdIDE disk from your VM (you can delete it from disk as well). Do not power on your VMware Machine again!

6) Now convert your VMDK file to VHD format using the newest Vmdk2Vhd utility (currently version 1.0.13) that can be downloaded from http://vmtoolkit.com.

7) You can now uninstall VMware Server and install Hyper-V + current Windows Updates on your host server

8) Create a new Virtual Machine in Hyper-V. Make sure you select Use an existing virtual hard disk and select the VHD file that you just created.

9) Power it on, Install Integration Services and reboot when prompted:

10) Assign the original IP address(es) to your new network card(s)

11) Check device manager

12) Do another reboot

13) Check that all your applications and services are running

14) Done!

Note: if you have Win2008 VMs then its not necessary to add a temporary IDE disk during migration but you might want to copy the relevant KB949219 (http://support.microsoft.com/kb/949219) update package to your VM before converting it. Otherwise it will start up with three warnings in the Device Manager for Microsoft VMBus Video Device, Microsoft VMBus HID Miniport and Microsoft VMBus Network Adapter - hence you will have no network access. I worked around it by burning the KB949219 updates to an ISO file using ISO recorder (http://isorecorder.alexfeinman.com) and mounting the ISO file to my VM.

Hi!

I'm going to ask a dummy question...

Why can't the Virtuak machine in Hyper-V use SCSI disk and the problem is solved?

Is the answear as simple thatVmdk2Vhd utility simply make an "IDE" disk?

-Alexander

VMware can boot from SCSI and Hyper-V can only boot from IDE. Hyper-V supports SCSI disks as extra disks. If you have a VMware vm with multiple SCSI disks, only the boot disk has to be converted to IDE. The rest can be left as SCSI.

scsi disk also perform a little better onder hyper-v because ofthe context switches in thevmwp.exe process (wich runs in user mode) when using an ide controller

best advice: boot from ide (the only possible way) and the rest on a scsi controller with scsi disks

Ahhhh, this was great news and very helpful.

So the VMware SCSI-disk which is only data disk/Extra disks I can use as-is in Hyper-V. Mayby change name from xxx.vmdk to xxx.vhd?

If so, this is very time-saving since I have some TB with disk.

-Alexander

I see.

ALL disk must be converted, and the boot disk must be set at IDE in the VM i Hyper-V, the other disk can be set at SCSI.

This was very helpful and saved me for a lot of time googling around.

-Alexander

I had some test Virtual Machines on our ESXi server that I wanted totest on Hyper-V, (Version 3 doesnt' give me the correct driver for clustering 2008 Servers). I exported them as a virtual Appliance, and then use the VmWare Standalone Converter to change it to a Workstation 6.5 VM, during that process I had the option to change theHard Disk to IDE. I then used the vmdk to vhd converted and then opened the Virtual Machine in HyperV - R2...

 
         I was finally successful in converting my Windows 2000 scsi boot drive GSX 1.0 VmWare virtual machine to Microsoft Hyper-v by doing the following: (I would of never figured this out without this thread, so thanks to all previous posters)

Remove or merge all snapshots (MY Gsx servers lock up if you mess with them before the snapshot has merged completely)

uninstall vmware tools

shut the VM down

goto settings add an ide disk that is at least 1gb bigger than the scsi disk you need to convert to ide

download and mount in the cd drive the Easus disk copy iso from  http://www.easeus.com/disk-copy/

start the vm, click in the vms window once, hit escape once. This might take a few time but you need to get to the boot menu - then from there boot from the cd.

copy from scsi with ntfs to ide raw - double check that you are writing to the scsi disk and let er rip.

Next use one of the tools listed above to convert the vmware ide drive to a M$ VHD. Next copy it to your hyper-v host, then from the hyper-v console create a new machine, use existing hd etc.. Till you can start the vm.

Let it boot up the first time with the nic disconnected. Log into the machine, cancel all hardware driver installation request. Then insert the integration disk - Installation should start automatically, if not you might have to use keyboard control to tab to the start menu, nav to run, type d: hit enter, carefully nav to the setup.exe in the i386 or 64 directories (depending on your machine type). Run setup.exe - let everything install. Shutdown,  connect nic in settings, boot it up - restore your nic ips if they are static (you wrote that down right?), run updates, and wipe the sweat off your brow - then go get a cup of coffee or an ice cold beer depending on what time of day it is.  

   In my case this w2k virtual machine had two more drives that were scsi. SCSI is supported with 2003 Microsoft servers but not w2k.  So, when I went into settings and mounted these scsi drives to ide controllers. Fired up the server and all was well.

 In my experiences I have found that it is important to be sure to remove the scsi adapter from this machine and never have a scsi adapter on any virtual machine that isnt attached to a device. If you do have an orphan scsi adapter, your hyper-v vm management services will start crashing. It might even reboot the host.

This error will show up in the log. "Faulting application vmms.exe, version 6.0.6001.18221"

This was addressed by a patch but my host server has all current patches to Feb 2010 and this still happens.

No warranties express or implied - and your milage may vary =)

• Proposed as answer by Dan Spec Wednesday, November 17, 2010 5:01 PM

If you are doing this with NT 4.0, you need to take a couple of extra steps.  I have added them below.

4a) for NT 4.0 - go into Control Panel - Devices, and find ATAPI - set the startup type to BOOT (this way NT loads the IDE driver when it boots up, so you don't get a STOP 7B error)

4b) for NT 4.0 - Uninstall all VMWare related stuff (converter and tools, for example) before conversion

9a) for NT 4.0 - you can't install Integration Services.  You can download the Intel 21143 NDIS drivers from the Intel website (http://www.intel.com/design/network/drivers/index.htm#21143).  Unpack the drivers, and create an ISO of them.  Mount this ISO as a CD in your NT 4.0 VM.  Then add an Intel 21140 Network Adapter to your NT 4.0 VM, and remove all other adapters.  Assign your IP addresses and networking should work fine.

Hope this helps - I hate turning NT 4.0 machines into Virtual Machines, but sometimes there is no way around it.

• Proposed as answer by paolo_ks2008 Wednesday, December 08, 2010 9:46 AM
• Unproposed as answer by BrianEhMVP, Moderator Wednesday, December 08, 2010 1:41 PM

Not sure if the Method I use is Officially supported by Microsoft...but what I do is I simply use the "Convert Physical Machine" Wizard in VMMR2 2008 to convert my VMWare Machines to MS Hyper-V. I´ve done it 4 times already and it has worked everytime without any problems. The Wizard does not really care if it is converting a Physical Machine or not.

Most of you will probably be skeptical, but try it out for yourself...what have you got to lose  :-)

Yes, thank you for that gotcha - you cannot use the disk resize option from VMware Converter - I am not totally sure why but it does not work.

The interesting part is that it used to work.

Yes, that is a supported method.

Just becuase it is a virtual machine does not force V2V as the only option.  Conversion is one of those opportunities for creativity.

Is it possible to move a Linux (Ubuntu & Suse) VM from an unmanaged ESXi server to Hyper-V? I need to avoid a total re-install of these VMs if at all possible.

Well I'm a bit late to this topic, but here it goes. We're running a few Hyper-V (2008 R2) servers and have recently purchased and installed SCVMM. Now I need to get rid of a pair of VMWare "trial" servers. I have approx. 5 Linux VMs on these VMWare servers. I have not found a way to convert the exported vmdk files, I have tried both the VMDK2VHD and Starwinds tools and each is unable to support the file format. The file system for these VMs is VMFS. It seems like the file system is unsupported or is otherwise unable to be converted to a VHD. We can install new Linux VMs on our Hyper-V servers but would prefer to be able to convert these evisting VMWare VMs.

I had thought that perhaps we needed to setup a trial VMWare VirtualCenter server to facilitate this conversion effort, but I'm now doubtful that this will do anything other than allow SCVMM to manage the VMWare servers and their VMs.  

A few details:

VMWare servers are running VMware ESX Server 3i, 3.5.0, 153875

VMs are running on VMFS 3.31 with a 1Mb block size

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

Are you exporting the VMware VMs to OVF virtual applicanes before conversion?

The Linux VMs on ESX run as HVM type VMs, these should be directly transferable - but there are gotchas. 

You still need to remove the VMware Tools from within the Linux VMs (in some cases the Linux Kernel does not deal with the VMware SCSI devices not being present and won't boot on another hypervisor)  - this is the big gotcha.

Otherwise with VMDK's - if you copy them direct form teh hyprvisor using SSH then you need all of htem in a single folder and you need to select the correct one (one is a definition and is the root, the second contains the data).

The OVF produces a different type of VMDK that up to date tools should be able to handle.

SCVMM cannot convert Linux VMs.

I tried the methods above on an XP VM within VMWare Server 2.0 and it never worked.

Within VMWare Server 2.0.2, Windows XP Pro SP3 VM, removed VMWare Tools. Shut down VM. Used a couple different conversion tools to make the .vmx to .vhd.

In Hyper V made a new VM, used the converted .vhd, started.

VM starts, but cannot control correctly with mouse and keyboard, network card fails. Installed Hyper V Intergrated Tools. Confirmed install and request for restart, did. Reboot results in the same problems, cannot control via mouse correctly, no internet, about 20 devices in device manager not found. So far nothing works on the conversion front for me.

Free tools are not 100% flawless.

Also, If your VM is VMware based, you should just simply have to uninstall the VMware tools and then convert the VMDK to VHD and create a new VM.

It sounds like you have a number of historic artifacts within the VM (possibly from an earlier conversion to VMware from a phsycial or something else).  I would verify that the origioanl VM on vmware does not have the missing devices.

What you describe tells me that the VMware tools are not uninstalling properly, and there are the VMware mouse artifacts hanging about. 

Originally this Vm was setup on VMWare Server 2.0.0 and has since been upgraded to the final 2.0.2 (Now abandoned by EMC/VMware hence the desire to move to Hyper-V on top of Windows)

Within VMWare this XP VM is flawless. No devices missing, performance is perfect, fully functional. I should try to install a new Win XP VM fresh on VMWare Server 2.0.2 and try the conversion from that one (After the VMWare Tools are installed then uninstalled) to see if the conversion is just flawed.

I am using the Starwind VMDX to VHD tool but also used drive imaging from Symantec (System Recovery 2010).

So far I am SOL but as stated I do need to do some testing. I am very worried about recreating my entire environment for myself and my clients some of which have domain controllers and Exchange on VMWare Server 2.0.2 that have been running for over 5 years without issue.

Isn't this all a tad complicated since the ONE thing abolustely needed for Hyper-V to succeed is seamless migration of VMWare images?

Machine interoperability has not been the focus of any virtualization / hypervisor vendor.

I have looked at it for multiple years and until recently there have been many things in place that make interoperability difficult.

Machine conversion is seen as a one way street - I am leaving platform x to platform y.  The converion tools that you pay for all work well.  The free tools are not simple.  Most folks get caught up in sticking with free tools and thus the greater pain involved.

The least pain tool to "convert" to hyper-v is using the conversion feature in SCVMM.  But, it too has its baggage to accept or deny.

Here is new simple to use (and free) tool to take a look at: http://www.5nine.com/vmware-hyper-v-v2v-conversion-free.aspx 

Good Speeds 10x faster than VMM 2008 R2 SP1 5mb/s vs 50mb/s Network VDDK

2x faster than VMM 2012 Beta (There are using the storage API in the next release FYI) 24mb/s vs 50mb/s Network VDDK.

It is a preview, has some bugs, and now supports only W2K8. They say actual release will support W2K3 and fixup of VMware integration services and files prior to VM starts on Hyper-V.

I just started orienting to move from VMWare Server 2.0 to Hyper-V. (at home, at work we've an VMWare ESX environment)
And so I stumbled on this thread.

I'm very afraid to convert because of the first post.
I have to convert all my machines before moving to Hyper-V, because VMware and Hyper-V can't coexist at one machine.

So I understood I have to uninstall the VMWare tools before migrating them.
But what's the truth about the SCSI disk, and what is the best practice in this scenario?
I only have one XP virtual machine. No problem, I'll rebuild that one.
Besides that I only have Windows 2008(R2) servers and one Windows 7 virtual machine.

Have I read it correctly that after conversion with WinImage (SCVMM is too big for me, just for conversion), I can boot those machines without any problem? No problem with IDE or SCSI? Or do I also have to add an IDE controller?
And is that enough? Will Windows 2008 boot then, or do I have to add an IDE disk too?
And if I add an IDE disk, how will Windows see that it has to boot from the SCSI disk?

I hope somebody has the right answers for me!

• Edited by -Ronny- Wednesday, September 21, 2011 8:38 AM

For those of you still having issues with this.

Regarding Steen Kirkby original post back in 2008. This did not work for me. I kept on getting “invalid vmdk file, please select another”

But what I did do – which was pretty easy.

The Virtual server.
2 x SCSI drives

1 x NIC

Windows 2008 STD

Shut down the virtual server you with to migrate.

Add an virtual IDE disk (my was set to 10GB)

Start virtual server
Remotely login to the server you wish to migrate from VMWare to Hyper-V (You should see the ide disk in disk manager as not initialize do not initialize the disk)

Uninstall vmware tools
You might want to think about un-joining it from its current domain depending if the hyper-v host is in the same domain if not un-join it (Remember the Local Admin password)

At this point install winimage create an image of each disk select .vhd when create the image (Have coffee it takes a while)

Shut down.

Copy all .vhd your hyper-v env

Login to you hyper-v server and create a new virtual server with IDE drives attached existing disks (The vhd files you just created)

And boot.

It work perfectly.

Most of my time was spent waiting for it to convert and the other half was waiting for it to copy from one disk to another, the rest was painless

• Proposed as answer by vanwykm Wednesday, October 12, 2011 2:10 PM

Export the VMware VM to and OVF appliance

then use Citrix Kensho to import the OVF Appliance to a Hyper-V host.

Check the OS Fix-up option to handle the SCSI to IDE device issue.

The capabilities of Kensho were added to both XenConvert and XenCenter (the GUI).

At the very least you can import the VMDK of the OVF package, but you should be able to consume the entire package.

Just be sure to create an OVF, not and OVA.  And OVA is just an OVF in a single TAR archive, nothing special about it - just more time to create and then unpack to consume.

Tried the Citrix XenConvert 2.3.1.2654 x64 version, converted my VMWare Server 2.X on top of Windows to the Hyper-V on top of windows VHD format. Did have an error converting but completed. Started up the converted VM and bam

Hal.dll missing, please reinstall.

SO, Xenconvert does NOT seem to work in some cases.

Converted XP SP3 Pro Vmware unit to HyperV

XenConvert does not take care of HAL issues.

With operating systems such as XP or Server 2003 and older you will run in to a large number of conversion issues leaving a VMware environment and moving to any other hypervisor.

You are better off rebuilding and re-installing.  If that is absolutely not an option, then you need to use more sophisticated tools or not expect free tools to give you good results.

The best free option to Hper-v is SCVMM and its conversion - simply open the OVF and place the VMDK in the SCVMM library.  Wait for SCVMM to index it and them create a VM using this VMDK.  SCVMM will take care of the rest.

Whenever getting a 0x0000007B you simply need to enable OTHER disk adapters for Windows to scan upon boot. If you search for "0x0000007b enable intelide atapi pciide" you will sample articles telling you what to change in the registry and thus enabling other disk adapters at boot.  In reality there's typically only ONE adapter you need to enable so one-at-a-time is the safest approach using tools like MSDaRT for editing an offline registry. However, turning on a few usual suspects like intelide, pciide, atapi, msahci and either iastor/iastorV on Intel motherboards should be enough. Here're a few great articles as a starter but I'll paste my COMPLETE list below that took a long time to compile and based on need. This technique can be used when imaging from one set of hardware to another or P2V or V2P or V2V. Same logic you're simply asking Windows to try other adapters and hopefully it finds your drive.

http://blogs.technet.com/b/michs/archive/2011/09/16/p2v-migration-issues-with-hyper-v-stop-0x0000007b.aspx

http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/windowsserver/en-US/b4d45d9d-4c90-4ab0-ae38-f1257ce9c608/windows-7-server-2008-r2-bare-metal-restore-0x0000007b-stop-error

http://www.minasi.com/forum/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=31980

ROOT LOCATION IN REGISTRY: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\System\CurrentControlSet\Services\

Changing the START value to 0 (zero) means to start the device at boot-time. Value of 3 which you may see means manual start but you want zero on one of these below to help with the boot error.

MY LARGE LIST OF ADAPTERS:

Aliide

Amdide

amdsata 

Atapi

Cmdide

iastor

IastorV

intelide

LSI_SAS

msahci

nvraid

nvstor

pciide

viaide

• Edited by JoeZee Monday, July 15, 2013 12:02 AM added 3rd link which is polupar for Hyper-V

Check my solution: http://infrahouse.wordpress.com/2013/10/28/how-to-convert-vmware-based-virtual-machines-and-disks-vmdk-to-hyper-v-based-virtual-machines-and-disks-vhd-using-microsoft-virtual-machine-converter-solution-accelerator-mvmc/

Joo Dias | Senior Consultant | Infrahouse.com | Copenhagen, Denmark
Please indicate "Mark as Answer" if this post has answered the question.

Hi,vanwykm

Thanks your advise,and i convert v2v is worked.