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Convert vhdx to vhd
Hyper-V manager has a quick tool to convert Hyper-V’s vhdx format to vhd format. It is available in the actions pane called “edit disk”. Among the various options there is one which will let you convert the vhdx to vhd format. There is also a PowerShell cmdlet which is reported to do the same thing. By the way, I am trying this conversion to see if I will be able to import a VM from Hyper-V to VMware. Result: Nope, it does not work At the time of importing, VMware client throws up an error. So I am wondering why would one want to do the vhdx to vhd conversion…
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Tool to export Hyper-V VMs to OVF? Yeah right!
Microsoft has provided a tool for exporting out Hyper-V VMs to OVF. They have it’s documentation here. Frankly, this tool is useless. It does not convert Hyper-V’s vhdx format to a format which vSphere or XenServer will understand. All this tool does is to create the XML file with a .ovf extension. I be fair to Microsoft, they do mention this fact in the second paragraph of the technet document (linked above). I used it, it just spits out the exact same vhdx file which I could have got like this:1. stop VM2. copy the vhdx files off the hard disk.Simple! Maybe I was hoping to something better. Now I…
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XenServer Conversion Tools
I found out that Citrix has multiple versions of XenConvert. Contrary to what is written on the download page, only the 2.3.1 version has the capability of converting a XVA to VHD. I just wasted quite some time troubleshooting why version 2.4.1 won’t show me the option of taking a XVA. Beware! The link to the latest conversion tools is here.
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Thin provisioning savings in a 3PAR SAN
I recently implemented a 3PAR SAN. After migrating 10-15 VMs onto it, I looked at the disk utilization. I was happy to see how good the thin provisioning in the 3PAR SAN’s operating system was working. Summary: Total space the Hyper-V servers “think” they have = 1600 GB Total space the Hyper-V servers “think” they have used = 596 GB Actual space the SAN has reserved for these LUNs = 403 GB So that counts as a savings of around 193GB worth of real disk space (32%). Sweet, eh?) Full details below.
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P2V using Hyper-V 2012
Here is how I started doing P2V on a Hyper-V 2012. I have SCVMM 2012. I want to do a V2V from a Citrix XenServer VM to a Hyper-V VM. The way to go about it is to do a P2V. The official technet documentation says run System Center Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer (VMMCA) first. Installing and running SC VMMCA So I installed System Center Virtual Machine Manager Configuration Analyzer on my Windows 7 workstation. It needed a couple of prerequisites like MBCA 2.0. Actually VMMCA is run from inside MBCA. When I run it I get this error message: Troubleshooting: Test ping: yes I can ping the VM…