Convert VMware Workstation 10 VM to Hyper-V VM using Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter

2014-11-26


You know why you have to convert VMware workstation VM to Hyper-V VM, so we do not need to waste time to discuss your reason. everybody has own reason.

Actually most of guides or articles or blogs on internet are teaching us: Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter can NOT convert a VMware workstation 10 VM to hyper-V VM but only if you installed other stuff like what official guys mentioned “Spports conversion of virtual machines from VMware vSphere 5.5, VMware vSphere 5.1, and VMware vSphere 4.1 hosts Hyper-V virtual machines.”. so people always find other free tools to do the convert job.

However, if you read Microsoft website carefully, you will read the they also told us this:

New Features in MVMC 3.0

...

Standard Features

...
(The last one) Includes Windows PowerShell capability for offline conversions of VMware-based virtual hard disks (VMDK) to a Hyper-V–based virtual hard disk file format (.vhd file).

See it? MVMC 3.0 has capability to convert a .VMDK file to .vhd file !  this is important info!

So now we know we can use PowerShell to convert a VMware .vmdk file to Hyper-V .vhd file, actually I could also transfer to a .vhdx file.

The following are the steps which I did (on Windows 8.1 pro system):

1: Uninstall VMware Tools from your VMware VM:

image (but actually I did not do this step since I could not run the VMware workstation VM successfully after a Windows system update issue, please check here. I got the convert successfully even I did not uninstall VMware tools, but I still suggest you do this step first! nobody can guarantee you will not have problem later) 2: Shutdown your VMware VM; 3: **Run PowerShell as Administrator**; 4: Run the following PowerShell commands : _cd "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter"_ _ import-module .\MvmcCmdlet.psd1_ _get-command -module mvmc*_ You should see the window like below one, if you can not see anything, please make sure you using PowerShell in right way, and MVMC 3.0 installed: image 5: Now you can start the convert process, find your VMware VM disk file directory, and specify the target folder to generate converted file. for example: ConvertTo-MvmcVirtualHardDisk -SourceLiteralPath “C:\MyVM2\testHyperV\Win81En\Win81En.vmdk” -DestinationLiteralPath “C:\MyVM2\testHyperV\convertedV” -VhdType DynamicHardDisk -VhdFormat Vhdx Now you will see a popup message bar which indicates the converter is on processing:image 6: You will have to wait longer time for entire converting process. some people said it would fast if using SSD driver, but I did not do the convert on SSD, so I don’t know. If you finally see the Windows go to end status like following one, that means you finished entire convert process, you can try to create a new Hyper-V VM using generated drive file. image Done.