Subscribe

Get the Network Administrators tool pack

Subscribe to our newsletter and get 11 free network administrator tools, plus a 30 page user guide so you can get the most out of them.

Click Here to get your free tools

Recent Posts

Search

Archives

Convert Hyper-V to VMWare

Post image for Convert Hyper-V to VMWare

by Steve Wiseman on March 6, 2015 · 5 comments

in Hyper-V


.

I have an older server with a few virtual machines under Hyper-V. I wanted to run them on my laptop using VMWare Workstation.

While looking for an easy way to switch I found a free tool that allows you to easily convert.

It is called StarWind V2V Converter.

What it does is convert the virtual hard drive within the VM.

To move from Hyper-V to VMWare, start out by installing the V2V Converter.

-Make sure your Hyper-V virtual machine is shutdown

-Find the location of the virtual hard drive for your VM

-Launch the V2V Converter.

Pick the virtual hard drive you want to convert, and then it will give you some options for the destination format. For VMWare workstation I used the VMWare growable image:

V2V Image Type Selection

Then you need to pick the hardware type. I would suggest picking IDE. At least in the few conversions I did – picking SCSI produced an image that would not boot. I think it depends on how you setup your Hyper-V virtual drive.

Click next and it will start the conversion:

Conversion Progress

Once it is complete, you will need to create a new virtual machine in VMWare. Pick the options that are close to your original configuration under Hyper-V:

OS Selection

Complete the wizard, so you can edit the virtual machine.

You will want to remove the current hard drive, and then add the converted file you created:

Edit Hard Drive

After that you can boot it up. Make sure you install VMWare tools to get all the drivers working.

You can get the V2V Converter from here:

https://www.starwindsoftware.com/converter

One more thing…Subscribe to my newsletter and get 11 free network administrator tools, plus a 30 page user guide so you can get the most out of them. Click Here to get your free tools

Related Articles:

{ 5 comments… read them below or add one }

1 Mike March 6, 2015 at 11:06 am

Very cool Steve. I have a Hyper-V host I want to convert…I will be taking a look at this tool.

2 John March 6, 2015 at 2:20 pm

Steve,

Will this produce an image that can be used with ESXi?

3 Steve Wiseman March 6, 2015 at 2:20 pm

Hi John,

While I have not tried it – I don’t see any reason why it would not work with ESXi. If you notice on my screen shot one of the formats is ESX

4 E Cornwell March 11, 2015 at 4:13 pm

Steve,

I can confirm that it works with ESXi. I converted a few machines a couple weeks ago. Went from Hyper V 2012 to ESXi 5.5. Just select the ESX Server image.

5 William Jenkins June 16, 2015 at 4:44 pm

FYI, since version 9, VMWare workstation can natively use VHD formatted images without conversion to VMDK. They don’t make it super obvious but it works great. Create a new VMware VM using “Custom Settings”, select “Existing Disk” during setup, and when prompted for the VMDK extension, change the extension to *.* All Files, select the .vhd, and you’re good to go. Boots right up off of the VHD file.

Leave a Comment

Category Links - Windows Forum - Exchange Forum