Export VM from Hyper-v as OVF

Question

Using Windows Server 2008 R2 and Hyper-V.

I'm migrating all our VMs from Hyper-V to VMWare, and in order to facilitate this I've been asked by our IT support to provide them with the VM in .ovf format.

So far I've shutdown and exported the VM from within Hyper-V, this successfully produces a .vhd file.

What do I need to do in order to provide a .ovf format?

I've downloaded StarWind V2V Converter which allows the converting of image files, but none of the output formats include .ovf. See image;

I've also tried VMware vCenter Converter Standalone but it doesn't offer me the option to upload my local .vhd file - see image.

It looks like the converter can only connect to a Hyper-V server, whereas I have Hyper-V installed on a Windows 200 R2 server :/

Any advice would be appreciated.

Solution

.ovf contains not only the virtual machine disks but also its metadata and configuration. That means there is no way to convert a .vhdx file (which is just a disk) into .ovf.

In order to migrate to VMware from Hyper-V you have to use StarWind V2V Converter recoding your .vhdx files to .vmdk including hardware patching and probably enabling rescue mode (these are V2V converter features that are crucial for such kind of migrations) to ensure target virtual machine successfully boots after conversion. The only thing left is to create a similar virtual machine on VMware and use the existing (previously converted) disk.

Comments

[Alexios Pappas]

Why not tell the converter to connect directly to the Hyper-V, from there it will fetch and convert the VMs (Even if they are offline) it has not difference.

[TheOrdinaryGeek]

Thanks for the answer. My files are vhd not vhdx - does this make a difference, and I don't see any option for hardware patching or enabling rescue mode in StarWind V2V Converter.

[Net Runner]

You can do the same procedure converting vhd either vhdx to vmdk

[BISI]

in my case, I have CLI-only linux VMs, and they are vertical market machines, meaning I am not able to install software like the converter on to the VM.