To name some of them: Vembu VMBackup, Xtreme VM Migrator, Vision Solutions Double-Take Move, NetIQ PlateSpin Migrate, NetApp OnCommand Shift as paid solutions, 2Tware Convert VHD, Vmdk2Vhd, VirtualBox as freeware.Īs you can see, there are many reasons for migration between different hypervisor platforms or from physical servers to a virtual environment.
The full description of their main features and download options can be easily found on their vendors’ websites. Supports all industry-standard hypervisorsĪ large variety of V2V converters are not included in a review in this article. VMs automatically adapt to the given hardware environment However, you can still download it from the Microsoft website:Īlso, main features of these products can be found in this comparison table:Īnd the honorary 2nd place goes to VMware vCenter Converter Standaloneĥnine V2V Easy Converter takes decent 3rd placeĪnd the last but not the least is Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter
MVMC is a great tool, sadly, it was discontinued and is currently out of support. Only a small agent needs to be installed for migration. MVMC removes VMware tools from VMs during migration. VM migration could be done via the GUI interface or via the PowerShell module. Also, there is an option of P2V (Physical to Virtual) conversion.
The free tool from Microsoft allows converting VMs only from the VMware (*.VMDK) to the Hyper-V format (generation 1, *.VHD and generation 2, *.VHDX), or directly to Windows Azure. Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter (MVMC) These benefits are the PowerShell function and Command Line Utility that allows automating the process of converting multiple VMs.ĥnine V2V Easy Converter could be downloaded here: The paid version has got some benefits compared with the free one. The Free version is available only as a GUI-powered application. It features no option for removing VMware Tools during the process of VM migration.
The possibility of VMs reconfiguration and parameters adjustment is included. The free version allows VM conversion from VMware to Hyper-V / Azure VMs / Amazon Web Services and P2V conversion. Unlike previous converters, it has got its free and paid versions with different functionality. The VMware vCenter Converter can be deployed as a standalone client or integrated to vCenter.Ī VMware account is required for downloading:Ī little bit standing out of the crowd tool is 5nine V2V Easy Converter. Moreover, conversion of several VMs could be done simultaneously. Migration could be done by running VMs with no downtime. One interesting feature of VMware vCenter Converter Standalone is a possibility of reconfiguring VMs and adjusting their parameters. During migration, a small agent needs to be installed on the source machine. VMs can migrate directly to the vSphere environment. Its Free VMware vCenter Converter allows converting VMs created on different platforms to VMware formats, as well as P2V (Physical To Virtual) conversion. StarWind V2V Converter can be easily downloaded from the StarWind website after a quick registration: StarWind V2V Converter can work with most hypervisors including Microsoft Hyper-V, VMware ESXi, Citrix XenServer, and KVM. In comparison with most converters, the solution from StarWind allows for dual-direction migration between different formats and hypervisors. It makes possible the conversion between all the most used VM formats: *.VMDK, StarWind *.IMG, *.VHD and *.VHDX, *.QCOW. Probably, the most known and widely used tool is Free StarWind V2V Converter. The review of the most popular and well-known solutions of VM converters will be provided in this article. It can convert a VM and move one between VM formats and physical environments where the hypervisor is running. A V2V (virtual machine to virtual machine) converter could help solving this task. This may come up with a very painful migration process between hypervisors in case of changing one, moving to different hardware or having several different hypervisors running. That is why sometimes it might be a challenge to deploy one hypervisor’s virtual machines on other hypervisors. In most cases, hypervisor vendors have their proprietary VM types incompatible with those of competitors’. A large variety of hypervisors from different vendors with different functionality and a number of virtual machines available for deployment are already present on the market. The virtual environment helps saving money, making infrastructure easier to administrate, and giving more possibilities for scaling. Nowadays, virtualization has become one of the main worldwide trends in the IT sphere.