Yellow Bricks

by Duncan Epping

converter

VMware Converter is back!

· · 7 Comments

William already reported on it a few days ago, and I just noticed it on VMTN that VMware vCenter Converter Standalone is back, or better said in beta! If you are a customer who already has access to the beta community, simply go to this link: vCenter Convert Beta Community to get access to the community and the download/releasenotes. If you don’t have access to the beta community, register for it via the following registration page: https://www.vmware.com/learn/1645300_REG.html, and download vCenter Converter!

<update>Available now: https://www.vmware.com/products/converter.html

I just went to the community and looked at the release notes and wanted to share some details with you:

  • VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 6.3.0 (GA) | 11 October 2022
  • You cannot upgrade to VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 6.3.0 from previous versions. If you have a previous version of Converter Standalone installed, uninstall it and then install Converter Standalone 6.3.0
  • You can install Converter on:
    • Windows Server 2012 (64-bit
    • Windows 8.1 (32-bit and 64-bit)
    • Windows Server 2012 R2 (64-bit)
    • Windows 10 (32-bit and 64-bit)
    • Windows Server 2016 (64-bit)
    • Windows Server 2019 (64-bit)
    • Windows 11 (64-bit)
    • Windows Server 2022 (64-bit)
  • VMware Converter Standalone can convert offline virtual machines from the following Hyper-V servers:
    • Windows Server 2012 (64-bit)
    • Windows Server 2012 R2 (64-bit)
    • Windows 10 (64-bit)
    • Windows Server 2016 (64-bit)
    • Windows Server 2019 (64-bit)
    • Windows 11 (64-bit)
    • Windows Server 2022 (64-bit)
  • VMware Converter Standalone can convert offline virtual machines from the following VMware products and versions:
    • VMware vSphere 6.5 (Update 3)
    • VMware vSphere 6.7 (Update 3)
    • VMware vSphere 7.0 + Update 1 + Update 2 + Update 3
    • VMware Workstation 16.x
    • VMware Fusion 12.x

Of course I downloaded the build and installed it on my Windows host, and it is up and running. Time to convert some machines!

As mentioned by William, the focus was very much on getting a new version out which was fully supported and developed using the latest frameworks. Next, the focus will be on adding new functionality and support for other platforms. I can’t wait for the next version!

Creating a VMware Converter Appliance

· ·

I was playing around with VMware Converter and thought it would be cool to create a VMware Converter Appliance. I can’t put this up for download, yet, but I can describe how to build your own appliance. I will use Novell’s Suse Studio to create a thin Linux VM that contains only the necessary bits and pieces.

  • Go to susestudio.com and open an account
  • Click “Create New Appliance”
  • Select “GNOME Desktop” and click “Create Appliance”
  • Change the name of the appliance to something that makes a bit more sense…
  • I would personally add “File Roller” and “GCC” so that you can actually open archives from the GUI and make modules, which is need to install VMware tools.
  • Go to the  “Configuration Tab” and click on “Appliance”
  • Increase the memory to 1024MB for a better running appliance
  • Download VMware Converter Standalone for Linux and add it as a file in the “Overlay Files” tab
  • When uploading is finished select a folder where the tar.gz file should be extracted, I picked “/vmwconverter”
  • Click on the “Build” Tab and wait for it to complete

It’s as easy as that! With SUSE you have the option to Test Drive it and make changes to the image while test driving it. I would recommend to just download it and install VMware Converter while running the VM with VMware player. Or you could import it with vCenter and run it on an ESX host. This way you can also install VMware tools immediately.

  • Open the VMX file with VMware Player
  • Install VMware Tools:
    Right click VM “install VMware tools”
  • Open a terminal session within the VM and type: 
    cd /media/VMware Tools
tar -C /tmp -xvf <VMware Tools File>
/tmp/vmware-tools-distrib/vmware-install.pl

    Agree with all the defaults…

  • Now to install VMware Converter open a terminal session and do the following: 
    cd /vmwconverter/vmware-converter-distrib
    ./vmware-install.pl

    Use all the defaults!

  • You can add an icon to the desktop by right clicking the desktop and selecting “Create Launcher”
  • Select “/usr/bin/vmware-converter-client”
  • And add the correct icon! (/usr/share/icons/vmware-converter.png)

Now your appliance is good to go and can be used everywhere in your virtual infrastructure. I would recommend making it a template or vApp and deploy it multiple times when doing many parallel migrations!

VMware vCenter Converter 4.0

· ·

VMware vCenter Converter 4.0 has just been released. Don’t let this name fool you cause Converter is still also available as a stand alone solution for P2V’ing your servers! You can find the release notes here.

So what’s new?

  • Physical to virtual machine conversion support for Linux (RHEL, SUSE and Ubuntu) as source
  • Physical to virtual machine conversion support for Windows Server 2008 as source
  • Hot cloning improvements to clone any incremental changes to physical machine during the P2V conversion process
  • Support for converting new third-party image formats including Parallels Desktop virtual machines, newer versions of Symantec, Acronis, and StorageCraft
  • Workflow automation enhancements to include automatic source shutdown, automatic start-up of the destination virtual machine as well as shutting down one or more services at the source and starting up selected services at the destination
  • Target disk selection and the ability to specify how the volumes are laid out in the new destination virtual machine
  • Destination virtual machine configuration, including CPU, memory, and disk controller type

I think especially the hot cloning improvement, which copies incremental changes, and the workflow automation are really cool features. These are the kind of enhancements that will make your life a lot easier during migration projects.

VMware Workstation 6.5 and OVF

· ·

I was looking into converting the VIMA appliance from OVF to a regular VM. I wanted to run VIMA directly from VMware Workstation. For the windows version of VMware Workstation there’s a conversion tool, and Arne of ICT-Freak wrote a nice howto. (Although it’s in Dutch you will figure it out cause of the large amount of screenshots!)

But I’m using VMware Workstation 6.5 on Ubuntu and it doesn’t contain the conversion features unfortunately. But luckily a beta version of VMware Converter has just been released, 4.0. As of this version VMware Converter is also available for Linux. And you can see where I’m going… You can use VMware Converter for converting .OVF appliances to VMware Workstation:

  1. Download VMware Converter
  2. Install it by unzipping the tar.gz file and running “./vmware-install.pl”
  3. Next, Next, Finish
  4. Start VMware Converter
  5. File, New, Convert Machine
  6. Source Type: Virtual Appliance
    And browse to the .OVF file
  7. Destination Type: VMware Workstation
    And pick a destination directory
  8. Next, Next Finish!

I think it’s great that more and more tools are available for Linux!

Cool feature of the VMware Converter plugin

· ·

How about backing up that dreadful application/server that you couldn’t or did not wanted to virtualize to your ESX environment? It could be useful to have a copy of a server that for whatever reason you did not virtualize. The new VMware Converter plugin for VirtualCenter gives you this option. You can create a reoccurring schedule for a p2v, you can even save several version of the converted machine. How cool is that! Seems like a great way to backup a machine!

How do I do this:

  1. click on scheduled tasks
  2. click new and pick “import a machine”
  3. select “physical” and enter the servers name/ip and username and password
  4. select the disks you want to import
  5. type a name for the VM
  6. select the destination host
  7. select a datastore
  8. select a network
  9. and schedule the task!