Convert a VMware Virtual Machine or Template to a Hyper-V VM

Q: Is there an easy way to convert a VMware virtual machine or template to a Hyper-V VM?

A: There are several virtual-to-virtual (V2V) solutions that enable conversion of VMware VMs and templates to Hyper-V format. System Center Virtual Machine Manager includes this capability.

Microsoft has released a new tool that's currently in beta and available from the Microsoft site called the Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter Solution Accelerator. It can convert VMs created on VMware vSphere 4.1 or 5.0 running guest OSs Windows Server 2003 SP2, Windows Server 2003 R2 SP2, Windows Server 2008 R2 or Windows 7 to a Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 Hyper-V VM.

The tool converts both the virtual hard disks (VHDs) from VMware and the CPU, memory, and some other configuration settings, but not network adapter configuration. The tool can also be used to just convert hard disk files, and a command-line utility is provided, MVMC.EXE, to enable command-line or scripting conversions.

The graphical wizard lets you select a VMware ESX or vCenter server, and any supported VM that's domain-joined can be selected and converted after a temporary path for the conversion and the final Hyper-V host is selected (see screen shot below).

Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter

Get more help at John Savill's FAQs page.