Tuesday, January 25, 2011

Convert a HyperV Image to VMWare

Problem: You have the physical files for a Hyper-V virtual machine and you need to convert it to VMWare. (Maybe you’ve downloaded one of Microsoft’s demo systems such as their SharePoint 2010 Information Worker Evaluation VM.)

Solution: If you have access to HyperV, load the image in HyperV and use VMWare’s stand alone converter. It’s awesome. Point it at your HyperV server, select the server, and the converter does the rest.

If you don’t have access to HyperV, all is not lost.

Option 1: Install Virtual PC, create a new virtual system, use the VHD from the image you have. Start that system up in VPC, ensure it’s running, shut it down, then use VMWare’s Import feature to read the .vmc file Virtual PC created. (VMWare’s Import will deal with .vmc files from VPC, but not the .xml or .exp files from HyperV.)

Unfortunately, the image I was trying to import wouldn’t come up in VPC, so I was left with the less elegant, funky sledgehammer approach of

Option 2: Grab WinImage, a nifty piece of shareware that lets you convert a VHD directly to a VMDK – the format VMWare uses. Download it, install it, launch it, use Disk | Convert Virtual Hard Disk image. Select the source VHD, choose to use a fixed or dynamic target disk type, then give it the name and location of the target VMDK. (See the very nice HOWTO.)

Now you can create a new VMWare image and use the existing VMDK. The VMDK’s format is from an older version of VMWare, but VMWare will nicely upgrade it for you.

Power on your VM and bask in your geeky awesomeness.

Then go pay for WinImage because they’ve saved your bacon and you should throw some money their way. That’s how shareware works, folks.

9 comments:

Audrey Hammonds said...

Thank you for this post. Have a Hyper-V image I was struggling to convert to VMWare. So far so good on your sledgehammer method. :)

Kevin said...

Excellent post!! Just like Audrey, I'm having great success with your "sledgehammer method" converting some Microsoft Hyper-V demonstration images into VMWare images able to run on my WinXP workstation. Many thanks!

Ivan Tapia said...

When i can download every rar file (700 Mb x 19 files 13 Gb aprox.)!! i 'll use the WinImage... Does someone have the VHD file for downloading?
It's horrible wait!!!
Thanks.

Andy Dang said...

Thanks for the post. I've been struggling with this and you save me.
Keep it up!

Simon said...

Spot on.... Thanks..

Was having an absolute arse of a time trying to get VM converter Standalone to talk to HyperV v1 hosts... this worked a treat!

Unknown said...

My problem solved :)
Thank u for this post

Chaki_Black said...

It is 3 ways to convert Hyper-V image to VMWare:
1) Convert HDD with VirtualBox console command:
vboxmanage clonehd C:\hdd.vhd C:\hdd.vmdk -format vmkd
Then create new virtual mashine in VMWare and start. It works.
2) Convert HHD with "StarWind V2V Image Converter". Start VM the same way.
But! At this way I needed to repair image (repair BSOD start) with Acronis Universal Restore.
3) Using "WinImage". Start VM the same way.
Thanks for advices

Unknown said...

Recently i have used VHD data recovery software to recover images, video & audio files, database, media, archives, documents etc from corrupt VHD.

Download:- http://www.filesrecoverytools.com/vhd-data-recovery.html

paulspmiths said...

I would like to suggest VHD Data Recovery software which provides effective and quick solution to recover data from corrupt VHD, it provides free trial version to recover lost VHD files.It can deeply scan corrupted Virtual partition whether it is FAT based or NTFS and then repair fixed & dynamic vhd file corruption/damage issues with no harm.

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