How To Guy

Free Tool: V2V Easy Converter Simplifies Move to Hyper-V

5nine takes vSphere-to-Hyper-V conversion to higher levels with its freely available VM conversion tool.

• By David Davis
• 11/28/2012

Back at TechEd 2012, Microsoft released a free tool into beta testing aimed at helping vSphere admins convert Windows virtual machines to Hyper-V (I wrote about it here). It's nifty, but check out this better alternative: 5nine V2V Easy Converter.

5nine has been quietly creating free and paid tools specifically for Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V. At TechEd, its v-Firewall and Anti-Malware got mentioned in numerous sessions as the only firewall solution available at the time for Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V that uses the new Hyper-V extensible switch.

I tried out 5nine V2V Easy Converter by installing it on my local workstation and then converting a vSphere Windows VM to a Hyper-V VM. It worked well and did allow me to modify the guest VM configuration during the conversion. Fig. 1 shows how successful my VM conversion went.

If you are a vSphere admin who is interested in moving some virtual machines to Hyper-V, here's how it can help you:

• It's non-intrusive and can convert running virtual machines from vSphere to Hyper-V.
• It runs on free Hyper-V Server 2008 R2/SP1 and VMware guests may be migrated onto a free Hyper-V server. It also runs on Windows 7, full and core versions of Windows Server 2008 R2/SP1, Windows 8, and even Windows Server 2012 full and core editions (prior to Microsoft supporting it).
• 5nine says that its converter is as much as 10 times faster than Microsoft's tool. (I haven't tested this claim.)
• It supports converting guest VMs with large virtual disks and shared disks, things that other conversion tools didn't support as of this writing.
• You are able to modify the target guest configuration parameters to make the new Hyper-V guest what you want it to be (see Fig. 2).

Figure 1. Almost no elbow grease is needed to make the conversion with 5nine. (Click image to view larger version.)

Figure 2. Configuration setting for converted VMs can be finalized before setting them free. (Click image to view larger version.)

Finally, one of the coolest features is that it has support for not only Windows guests, but also Ubuntu and CentOS. You can try 5nine V2V Easy Converter for yourself, here.