News
Microsoft Reintroduces Physical-to-Virtual Conversion of Virtual Machines
The third iteration of its Virtual Machine Converter addresses customer concerns from P2V removal in version 2.
Physical-to-virtual conversion is back in the Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter (MVMC). MVMC 3.0, made available for
download Monday, has brought back the ability to do physical-to-virtual (P2V) conversions, answering the complaints of customers upset when that capability
was pulled from version 2.
When it released version 2 in April, P2V was dropped in favor of virtual-to-virtual (V2V)-only conversions. Although version 2 added a lot of features, such as support for VMware vCenter and ESXi version 5.5, along with expanded Linux guest OS support and a Windows PowerShell interface, what Microsoft took away may have been noticed more than what was added.
Physical servers that can be converted as part of the P2V process go back as far as Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, and Windows Vista on the client side.
MVMC 3.0 is a standalone tool that Microsoft touts as a way to convert VMware virtual machines (VMs) to Hyper-V hosts. It converts virtual disks that are attached to a VMware VM to virtual hard disks that can be uploaded to Microsoft Azure. It can convert VMware VMs back to vSphere 4.1.
About the Author
Keith Ward is the editor in chief of Virtualization & Cloud Review. Follow him on Twitter @VirtReviewKeith.