In the event you’re seeking to migrate workloads from a VMware platform to Microsoft Hyper-V, the excellent news is that there are a number of migration paths doable. The dangerous information is that it will not be instantly apparent which method is greatest in your wants.
That is why we have ready this information to migrating from VMware to Hyper-V. Under, you may discover a comparability of the principle migration methods, together with the important thing steps you may want to hold out to maneuver your digital machines (VMs) from a VMware surroundings into Hyper-V.
Background: What Is VMware, and What Is Hyper-V?
Let’s start by defining each product.
VMware is a suite of solutions for running and managing virtual machines. VMware was one of the first major vendors in the virtual machine business, and it has long offered a robust set of virtualization capabilities.
Hyper-V is a virtualization platform from Microsoft. It lets you deploy and run virtual machines on most versions of Windows. (Hyper-V doesn’t support Windows Home, but it works on other modern versions of the Windows operating system.)
Why Migrate From VMware to Hyper-V?
Generally speaking, VMware and Hyper-V are both excellent virtualization platforms. They provide the same core features and support most of the same use cases. Their price points are also similar (especially when you factor in the costs of all of the ancillary technologies — such as operating system licenses, networking, and storage — that you’ll need to support VM deployments).
That said, Hyper-V offers some capabilities that VMware lacks. Hyper-V is more tightly integrated with Windows — which is unsurprising, given that Hyper-V is a Microsoft technology. This makes Hyper-V simpler to deploy and manage in some senses, since much of the technology you’ll need is available by default if you already have a Windows environment running.
There’s also the fact that Broadcom’s recent acquisition of VMware has created some uncertainty about the way forward for VMware’s merchandise, rising curiosity in VMware alternatives. Though at this level there isn’t any particular purpose to suppose that Broadcom will upend VMware’s product choices, even the slightest chance that it might occur could have some organizations contemplating migrating from VMware to an alternate like Hyper-V.
On steadiness, we should always be aware that VMware has loads of strengths that Hyper-V lacks. For instance, VMware works throughout a wider vary of working techniques, whereas Hyper-V is Home windows-centric. VMware’s orchestration, digital networking, and safety features are additionally arguably extra strong than these of Hyper-V — however an in depth comparability of those capabilities inside every platform is past the scope of this text.
Conditions for Migrating to Hyper-V
As we focus on intimately beneath, there are a number of migration strategies obtainable for getting VMs from a VMware surroundings into Hyper-V. Nonetheless, all of the migration paths would require you to handle a number of stipulations previous to beginning the migration.
Prerequisite 1: Licensing issues
Migrating VMs from one platform to a different could influence the provision of licenses for the Home windows working techniques that you’ve working on VMs. It is because once you change a VM’s configuration, it seems to the working system that the system’s “{hardware}” has modified (though the {hardware} is digital relatively than bodily), which is able to trigger licenses to cease working in some circumstances.
Whether or not it will truly current a difficulty relies on precisely which kind of Home windows working system license you’ve got. Normally, it’s doable emigrate a Home windows license to a brand new VM; you should not must pay for brand spanking new licenses. However that is one thing you may need to look into previous to performing the migration, to make sure that your new Hyper-V surroundings would not grow to be unusable because of licensing points.
Prerequisite 2: {Hardware} issues
Your new Hyper-V surroundings requires servers to host it. If all of your servers are presently tied up internet hosting VMware VMs, you may must both buy new servers or (if you wish to take a extra cost-efficient method) migrate your VMware VMs incrementally relatively than .
The latter method means shutting down a few of your VMware VMs, changing them to Hyper-V, then repeating the method with the opposite VMware VMs till you’ve got migrated the entire VMs. That method, you do not have to face up an entire new set of servers to host the brand new VMs.
Typically, since VMware and Hyper-V provide comparable ranges of efficiency and useful resource consumption, Hyper-V should not require any extra bare-metal servers past those you employ for VMware.
Prerequisite 3: Putting in Hyper-V
You will want to put in Hyper-V earlier than you may migrate VMs to it. Happily, this step is comparatively simple, due to Hyper-V’s tight integration with Home windows. Normally, to put in it, you merely want to inform Home windows to allow Hyper-V.
The precise course of for enabling Hyper-V relies on which model of Home windows you might be utilizing. On Home windows 10, you may turn on Hyper-V through the Windows Settings app. On Home windows Server editions, use Server Manager to enable Hyper-V.
You will must arrange Hyper-V on every bare-metal server that will probably be a part of your Hyper-V surroundings.
Methods to Migrate From VMware to Hyper-V
As soon as you have sorted out licensing and {hardware} necessities, you may determine precisely how you may migrate VMs from a VMware surroundings to Hyper-V. There are two predominant approaches.
Technique 1: Convert offline VMs
This conversion technique is essentially the most simple, and since quite a lot of free VM conversion instruments can be found, you may perform one of these migration with out having to pay for added software program.
The draw back of this method is that it’s a must to shut down every VM (that is essential as a result of you may’t convert photos of working VMs), then convert it to a brand new VM format, as a part of the migration. For the reason that conversion course of can take fairly a little bit of time, particularly if in case you have giant VM photos, you might incur vital downtime.
How one can migrate VMs offline
The offline migration method entails these steps:
- Shut down the VMware VMs you need to migrate.
- Convert the photographs for the VMware VMs into a picture format suitable with Hyper-V. You are able to do this utilizing a instrument like StarWind V2V converter, Microsoft’s VM conversion wizard, or qemu-img, an open supply instrument for changing VMs. In the event you use qemu-img, you may convert the VMs with a command like:
qemu-img convert -O vpc -f vmdk vmware-image.vmdk hyper-v-image.vhd
The time required to transform VMs can differ relying in your VM configurations and the conversion instrument you employ — so it is value experimenting with totally different choices to see which instrument works sooner for the sorts of VMs you might be working with.
- Deploy the newly transformed VMs in Hyper-V.
Technique 2: Migrate utilizing VM snapshots
A second migration technique is to take snapshots of your VMware VMs, then use these snapshots to create new digital machines in Hyper-V. You may obtain this utilizing any backup and restore software program that helps each VMware and Hyper-V environments.
The benefit of this method is that, since you’re taking a snapshot of a working VM as a substitute of changing VM photos from one format to a different, you do not have to close down your VMware VMs earlier than you may start the migration. You additionally do not must undertake an extended conversion course of. Thus, this method is quicker and (in some methods) easier than the offline conversion technique described above.
The draw back of snapshot-based migration is that you just want third-party software program to hold it out. VMware allows you to take snapshots of VMs, however you may’t instantly import these snapshots into Hyper-V — and you may’t use Hyper-V to take snapshots of VMware VMs. So, you want a third-party backup-and-restore instrument that’s able to taking snapshots from VMware, then “restoring” them as Hyper-V VMs. (We put “restoring” in quotes right here as a result of this course of would not actually contain restoring the VMs again to their unique state; as a substitute, you are restoring them as VMs working on a unique platform — though when carried out efficiently, the contents of the VMs ought to stay intact.)
To hold out one of these migration, comply with these steps:
- Utilizing a third-party backup-and-restore instrument, take snapshots of every VMware VM that you just need to migrate.
- Utilizing the identical third-party instrument, “get well” or “restore” the VMs from the snapshots. When choosing which virtualization software program to make use of for the VMs you might be recovering or restoring, select Hyper-V as a substitute of VMware.
Publish-migration Steps
Regardless of which VMware migration technique you select to get VMs into Hyper-V, you may need to take a while afterward for post-migration validation and configuration.
For instance, you might must arrange new digital networking or storage assets in Hyper-V to emulate the networking and storage configuration you had working in VMware. You may additionally want to regulate roles and permissions to make sure that totally different members of your workforce have the right ranges of entry to the Hyper-V VMs.
And it’s best to, after all, validate that your newly migrated VMs work as anticipated. Bugs in conversion and restoration instruments can sometimes set off unusual conduct or trigger knowledge corruption, so think about steps like running file system checks to verify there are not any abnormalities within the new VMs earlier than you commit them absolutely to manufacturing.
Concerning the writer
Christopher Tozzi is a know-how analyst with material experience in cloud computing, utility improvement, open supply software program, virtualization, containers and extra. He additionally lectures at a serious college within the Albany, New York, space. His guide, “For Enjoyable and Revenue: A Historical past of the Free and Open Supply Software program Revolution,” was printed by MIT Press.
