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I would like to download one of the hyper-v images offered by Microsoft and run it in VMWare Workstation 7.x. Is this possible? If so, can you recommend a converter (preferably a free one) that can convert from hyper-v VHD to VMWare's VMDK format? I have tried VMWare converter but it does not seem to work.

Thanks.

4 Answers4

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VMWare will directly read and write to VHDs without the need for any conversion. You might want to disable/uninstall its "helper" applications (if installed) and possibly install the corresponding VMWare helper.

user48838
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I have written up a blog post on how to Convert Hyper-V Virtual Machine to VMWare Virtual Machine

Deer Hunter
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Kanwal Khipple
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As the poster above mentioned VMware workstation will directly use VHD's although it won't be at its most performant.

As you indicated vmware converter should be able to convert these images to a vmware native format too.

If all else fails try platespin migrate (paid for but you should be able to get trial). This software allows for virtual - virtual, virtual - physical, physical - virtual and physical - physical migrations and in some circumstances live without taking the OS down.

ccame
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I use following link. It is more recent.

In my opinion the "qemu-img" method is the easiest one.

https://www.nakivo.com/blog/how-to-convert-vhd-to-vmdk-a-step-by-step-guide/

Using qemu-img in Windows

Download qemu-img from the official web site (32-bit and 64-bit installers are available to download). In the current example, qemu-img-win-x64-2_3_0 is used. Extract files form the downloaded archive, for example, to C:\Programs\qemu-img. Then launch the Windows command line (CMD) - Press Windows+R to open the “Run” box. Type “cmd” into the box and press Ctrl+Shift+Enter to run the command as an administrator.

Go to the qemu-img directory:

cd C:\Programs\qemu-img

Commands of qemu-img in Linux and Windows are identical. Convert VHD to VMDK in Windows

Run CMD as administrator and go to the directory where qemu-img is installed.

View the virtual disk information:

qemu-img.exe info c:\Virtual\Hyper-V\test-disk.vhd

Convert the VHD disk image to the VMDK format:

qemu-img.exe convert -p c:\Virtual\Hyper-V\test-disk.vhd -O vmdk c:\Virtual\Hyper-V\test-disk.vmdk

Where:

-p – show progress

-O – the output file

Wait until the conversion process is finished.

Omid Kosari
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