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Microsoft kept its promise! The company has released Microsoft Virtual Machine Convertor (MVMC) 3.0 and included every feature the average IT professional needs to migrate to Hyper-V. In this guide, we are going to cover the new features in MVMC 3.0, any limitations for machine conversions, and a short walkthrough of a virtual machine conversion.
New features in Microsoft Virtual Machine Convertor 3.0
The biggest feature of MVMC 3.0 is physical-to-virtual (P2V) machine conversions. This feature, which has been on the wish list for a very long time, was expected in version 2. It is especially useful considering that P2V machine conversions were removed in the latest release of System Center Virtual Machine Manager.
MVMC 3.0 contains a new virtual and physical machine conversion option.
P2V is done online. The source OS has to be Windows Server 2008/Vista or above. The destination Hyper-V machine can be Windows Server 2008 R2 and above. Machines running Linux or Windows Server 2003 are not supported for P2V conversions.
Conversions from VMware to Hyper-V or to Azure are a bit more lenient. The following table shows which OS conversions are supported.
| Hyper-V | Azure | |
| Windows Server 2012 R2 Standard | Y | Y |
| Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter | Y | N |
| Windows Server 2012 Standard | Y | Y |
| Windows Server 2012 Datacenter | Y | Y |
| Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard | Y | Y |
| Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise | Y | Y |
| Windows Server 2008 R2 Datacenter | Y | Y |
| Windows Server 2008 R2 Web | N | Y |
| Windows Server 2008 Standard | Y | Y |
| Windows Server 2008 Enterprise | Y | Y |
| Windows Server 2008 Datacenter | Y | Y |
| Windows 8 Enterprise | Y | N |
| Windows 8 Pro | Y | N |
| Windows 7 Enterprise | Y | N |
| Windows 7 Professional | Y | N |
| Windows 7 Ultimate | Y | N |
| Windows VistaEnterprise | Y | N |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 | Y | Y |
| Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 | Y | Y |
| Ubuntu 12.04 | Y | Y |
| Ubuntu 10.04 | Y | N |
| SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 | Y | Y |
| CentOS 6 | Y | Y |
| CentOS 5 | Y | Y |
| Debian GNU/Linux 7 | Y | Y |
| Oracle Linux 6 | Y | Y |
| Oracle Linux 5 | Y | Y |
The supported OS migrations and additional information can be found in the MVMC 3.0 Admin Guide.
P2V walkthrough: Converting a physical machine to Hyper-V
The machine running MVMC 3.0 must be on Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or above. The Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 machine must have .NET Framework 3.5 and .NET Framework 4 installed. Server 2012 and Server 2012 R2 must have .NET Framework 4.5 installed.
The converting server (the one running MVMC) will need Visual C++ Redistributable for Visual Studio 2012 Update 1 and the BITS featured installed as well. After those prerequisites are met, MVMC 3.0 can be installed from here.
Microsoft Virtual Machine Convertor 3.0 can be launched from All Programs. It does require administrative permissions on the converting server to run. Begin the conversion process by choosing either a virtual or a physical machine conversion. In this scenario, the conversion will be for a physical server running Windows Server 2008 R2.
To connect to the source (machine that we are converting), we must specify our FQDN and an administrative user of the server. If the user is not local, be sure to specify a domain name with it.
Although you can convert by IP, I had the best luck with the FQDN of the source server.
To retrieve the physical status of the machine, MVMC will install a small agent. If the installation was successful, the system information of the machine will be displayed (as seen in the screenshot below).
This system information scan with MVMC 3.0 was successful.
When the server has multiple volumes, MVMC will allow the conversion of all of them in the Volume Configuration pane. The next pane, VM Configuration, controls the Hyper-V name, memory, and CPU settings. Remember that the Hyper-V name can differ from the name within the OS.
With the source configuration specified, MVMC will connect to a Hyper-V host and will use your Windows credentials to connect. A successful connection will then prompt for a location to store the converted disk. Be sure that the server name in the path matches the Hyper-V host that was specified earlier.
A red asterisk indicated an invalid path or a path that doesn’t match the Hyper-V host.
The machine running MVMC will need enough free space on it to store the VHDs while the volumes are being converted. This is specified in the Workspace pane and can include local external drives. Finally, MVMC will need to know if a network should be attached to the converted VM. As an extra precaution, I opted for no network connection. I prefer to manually add a connection later. The size of the source machine largely determines the time it takes to convert to a virtual setup. A detailed log is created in the event of an error.
Microsoft Virtual Machine Convertor 3.0 is a solid P2V tool for Hyper-V. Microsoft’s belief is that, by making MVMC a standalone product, MVMC will receive timely updates for conversions. For MVMC to remain relevant, Microsoft will need to release immediate updates when a new OS is released. I hope that future releases will ease the converting server requirements and improve conversion times.
Hi Juan – see this article: https://4sysops.com/archives/how-to-p2v-windows-server-2012-r2-with-uefi-and-a-gpt-disk/
Hi Joseph,
I am doing P2V with MVMC3.0 after conversion, when I am trying to start the VM, it’s throwing me the error..Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. To fix the problem:
Insert your Windows installation disc and restart your computer.
Choose your language settings, and then click “Next.”
Click “Repair your computer.”
If you do not have this disc, contact your system administrator or computer manufacturer for assistance.
File: \windows\system32\winload.exe
Status: 0xc000000f
Info: The selected entry could not be loaded because the application is missing or corrupt
Is there anything to do with encryption or Bitlocker?
Regards,
Arbind
Did this in a lab environment and it worked great. Tried it in production and I get the following error: Details MVMC Bits client job on client host with remote URL failed with error code 2147954429 and error description A connection with the server could not be established.
Anybody have any ideas?
Hi. Suppose you have a production server that can’t be offline even for 30 min. You want to do a P2V, where the VM is an hyper-V VM (running Windows 2008 R2). The host is Windows Server 2012 R2. People will continue working on the physical machine while you are doing the virtualization. Therefore, between the physical machine and its virtualized version there will be some sort of “delta”. Will MVMC 3.0 deal with this? How?
Thank you!
If you’ve got a single physical server that can’t be offline for even 30 minutes, you’ve got bigger problems. If you have a catastrophic failure of that system, you’re going to be down longer than 30 minutes. Your best bet is probably going to be to stand up that application in a more fault-tolerant configuration and then migrate it from the physical hardware to the new VM’s.
Can the Hyper-V Parent be the conversion server where MVMC is installed?
Would like it to be clearly stated if on the smallest of business scales (single server) that the P2V can be done by choosing to use the new Hyper-V Parent (target new server) to play the conversion server role.
I am attempting to convert a physical Server 2008 R2 SP1 server onto a virtual Hyper-v server (Server 2012 Std). I am running the MVMC console from the 2012 server and when I start the process, I get an error almost immediately that states: Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter encountered an error while attempting to convert the virtual machine. Details: MVMC is unable to create a volume snapshot on servername.domain. Error code 0x809933BB
I have checked and there are no .bak profiles in the profilelist.
Any advice please?
Same problem for me. Did you resolve this issue?
Do you still get this error if you use disk2vhd to create a vhdx of the drive?