Gho To Vmdk Converter 18
Sixta Strissel
StarWind V2V Converter / P2V Migrator is a free software for cloning and transforming VMs from one format to another, as well as converting physical machines into virtual ones. It is utilized when migration or Hypervisor Switch is required. Compared to the typical converters built into hypervisors, StarWind V2V Converter / P2V Migrator offers bi-directional conversion between all the major VM formats: VMDK, VHD/VHDX (Windows Repair Mode aware), QCOW2, and StarWind native IMG.
StarWind V2V Converter has numerous competitive gains over converters built into your standard hypervisors. First, it supports bi-directional VM conversion between various hypervisor vendor formats. To save time during migration and Hypervisor Switch, V2V Converter allows to convert VMs directly from one hypervisor server to another without creating an extra VM disk copy. On top of that, you can easily migrate your vital host VM images between different hypervisor servers without any data loss or corruption. Want to convert local files? V2V can do that, too.
I have the stand alone converter but that appears (I could be using it wrong) to want to pick up virtual machines and convert them rather than virtual disks. If I am missing something, let me know and I will check it out! Or is there a stand alone VMDK converter I should be using?
how about booting your server with the ntfs file system using something like ubuntu (it supports ntfs) then use scp to copy vmdks to local stores on esx server and then finally do vmkfstools -i to import them...
idle-jam suggested using the standalone converter to convert the vmdks but I cannot find a way to open vmdks as opposed to vmx. There must be someway of converting vmdks not from the ESXi console. Are there any error logs I could be looking at as to why the vmkfstools seg faults? Is it worth grabbing a trial of something (vMotion?) that will allow me to do this? Is it worth installing a version of vmserver, creating a vm, adding the vmdks to that machine and then using the convertor?
one issue I noticed from earlier was that you are talking 5 TB.... there is a 2TB limitation on VMFS. (pretty sure you know this ) Also the vmkfstools -i command consolidates all the vmdks and creates 1 big one.... in other words more space needed.
>one issue I noticed from earlier was that you are talking 5 TB.... there is a 2TB limitation on VMFS. (pretty sure you know this ) Also the vmkfstools -i command consolidates all the vmdks and creates 1 big one.... in other words more space needed.
Windows VM on ESX server then use CIFS to copy vmdks to it..then virtual infracstructure client and browse/copy to datastores on esx server (should be fast as its local at this point) finally consolidate... Still very messy...
Currently running using a BackTrack live CD (4R2). VMDKs are called vd1-media.vmdk -> vd1-media-f476.vmdk. Each one is 2147221504 (apart from the last one, vd1-media-f476.vmdk which is 124518400) They were created under VMware Server several years ago.
The reason for this error is that ESX/vSphere is looking for a virtual disk file (VMDK) that actually points to a -flat.vmdk file. The Desktop/Hosted products do not use this type of Virtual Disk but ESX/vSphere does. You can use VMware Converter to fix this error by converting the VM to an ESX/vSphere compatible VM.
1) For source VMDK I have 2 options: VMDK and Flat VMDK. I know the difference between the 2, but which file is the correct one to pick in StarWind converter? If I choose the descriptor VMDK (1KB size), the converter still understands to work on the actual flat VMDK. So any difference what file to select?
1. Pick *-flat.vmdk. It is the virtual equivalent of a physical hard drive, a file where raw data is written to.
2. In order to finish "VMDK -> Gen 2 VHDX" convertion proceed with:
a) make Gen 1 VHDX from VMDK using StarWind V2V
b) convert Gen 1 VHDX to Gen 2 VHDX using the script -VMGeneration-81ddafa2 Opens a new window
I have some old images of old Linux filesystems in flat file format. they can be used by Bochs, but I need to run them with Virtual Box. Virtual Box cannot use images in this format, so I need to convert these images from flat file to .vmdk file format. Is there any way to do this?
On windows, use to convert raw files created by dd or winhex to vmdk. raw2vmdk v0.1.3.2 has a bug - once the vmdk file is created, edit the vmdk file and fix the path to the raw file (in my case instead of D:\Temp\flash_16gb.raw (created by winhex) the generated path was D:Tempflash_16gb.raw). Then, open it in a vmware virtual machine version 6.5-7 (5.1 was refusing to attach the vmdk harddrive). howgh!
Just to give you an another option, you could use as well. dd2vmdk is a *nix-based program that allows you to mount raw disk images (created by dd, dcfldd, dc3dd, ftk imager, etc) by taking the raw image, analyzing the master boot record (physical sector 0), and getting specific information that is need to create a vmdk file.
I am really stuck. Trying to create a .VMDK from an image. I tried using the VM-standalone converter with a .v2i image, but the virtual-machine it created gave me the blue-screen of death when trying to boot windows, must still be looking for some of the physical-machine hardware that no longer exists on the VM (but I thought that the converter is supposed to fix that...)
I want to try converting my .GHO image to VMDK and see if this one will work. I have found in the forums I can use the command switch
Export VM using CMD and not the GUI because you can export without using SSL encryption, it's lot faster. You can export in only in XVA format from cmd though, but it's still faster to export in XVA and convert to OVF. Once you run command you can see the VM icon becomes yellow and you can see export progress in Xencenter notifications.
go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\XenCenter and open cmd in that location. Run command:
xe.exe -s -u root -pw vm-export vm="" filename=C:\Export\.xva --nossl
Once export finishes you need to convert the xva appliance file to OVG.
Download and Install XenConvert (Xenconvert is depricated and you cannot download it from Citrix. Don't download 2.4.1 version. It doesn't have an option to convert XVA to OVF or any other option to convert vdisk file. Download 2.3.2 version. Here is the download link - _Install_x64.exe)
Run Xenconvert choose - From - Xenserver virtual appliance,To - open virtualization format ovf
Once conversion finishes rename vhd files to proper vm name, because it will called ref**.vhd.
You cannot import OVF into VMware because it will show some kind of XML error. You have convert OVF to VMDK.
Download and Install Starwind V2V converter latest version and run it(you need to register with legit email. They will send you download link in email):
Run Starwind. Source image location - local file> choose VHD file >choose VMware ESX server image and run conversion
After it finishes it will create two files *.VMDK and *-flat.VMDK. Create new folder in datastore, copy both files there and wait till VMware finishes combining both files.
Create new VM and choose existing disk, find your VMDK file in datastore and you are done.
Win2012 will boot straight away.
I'm hoping there's a better answer than this, but I've read repeated accounts of better success in converting large vmdks by breaking them down into 2gb drives (with VMWare Converter) prior to conversion.
Just converting the vmdk to a vhd won't transfer the server to Hyper-V as all the drivers will be wrong. I had to do just the same as you, with about half a dozen VMWare virtual servers. I did it by using the Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager to import the servers just as if they were physical servers. I think the SCVMM is a free download from Microsoft, or at least an evaluation version is available.
When I converted to vhd from vmdk using winimage, the resulting file after being added to a new Hyperv VM did not boot and it told me that the version of windows on that disk was corrupt. Running repair from windows image file did not help. The OS is win2k3 SP2.
StarWind V2V Converter is a free download tool that allows the conversion and cloning of VMs from one format to another and is utilized when migration or hypervisor switch is required. Compared to typical converters built into hypervisors, StarWind V2V Converter performs bi-directional conversion between multiple VM formats such as VHD to VMDK and VMDK to VHD. Starwind V2v Converter supports the most widely used formats: VMDK, VHD/VHDX (Windows Repair Mode aware), StarWind native IMG and QCOW.
NOTE: Depending on your hardware, you may need to boot the .vmdk file using VMware Workstation or Player before moving the file to the Proxmox VE server. This allows windows to install additional drivers for the disk controller. If promoted to convert the disk to Workstation 9.x compatibility, say Yes. You won't know if you need this step until starting the Windows VM in the final step. If you get a blue screen during boot, you should try this step.
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