How To Convert Vhdx To Vmdk

[Garoa Wolff]

VHDrefers to the disk image format that was introduced as the virtual disk format of virtual machines for Connectix Virtual PC. Later, Microsoft bought Virtual PC and continued development of this virtualization product. Then, Microsoft presented Hyper-V as a substitution of Microsoft Virtual PC. The main VHD features are:

Generation 2 VMs support using both VHDX and VHD virtual disks. However, Azure VMs can use only virtual disks of the VHD format. VHDX virtual disks can be created in the Disk Management window in Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016. VHDX images can be also mounted (attached) as a disk drive, displayed in Windows Explorer (My Computer) in the latest Windows versions thanks to the built-in VHDX driver.

VMDK is an open format of virtual disk images that is used by VMware hypervisors, VirtualBox, QEMU etc., and is not supported by Hyper-V. VMDK image files can be regarded as containers to store data similarly as on physical hard disks, and have a high compatibility with diverse virtualization software. The maximum size of the VMDK virtual disk has been increased from 2 TB to 62 TB. VMDK virtual disks can be divided into the following types and variations: monolithic, split, sparse, flat, as well as thin and thick provisioned. Delta VMDK disks are created when taking VM snapshots. VMDK files can be mapped (mounted) to the specified mount point on your host machine if VMware Workstation is installed. A high level of reliability is provided. 4-KB native sectors are supported for VMDK virtual disks, used by the newest versions of VMware products with VMF S6.

This is an optional step that allows you to ensure that a source VHD or VHDX virtual disk is healthy, and view contained files. This approach prevents you from confusing and wasting time on converting the wrong virtual disk. If you want only to extract files from VHD images, this section is what you need. VHD files can be mounted to a directory on Linux and can be mapped to a specified drive letter in Windows.

Note: Windows can determine only partitions with supported file systems: NTFS, FAT32, exFAT, ReFS. If your virtual disk contains Linux partitions with ext3, ext4, and other file systems, you will not be able to view the content of VHD or VHDX files mounted to your Windows system without third-party tools.

In order to unmount a VHD or VHDX virtual disk from your Windows system, open Windows Explorer, right click the drive letter assigned to your virtual disk, and in the context menu, click Eject.

QEMU is an open source machine emulation and virtualization platform. Qemu-img is a utility of the QEMU software kit that can be used to convert virtual disks from one format to another. Qemu-img can be used to convert VHD to VMDK, and using this utility is the first method to convert Hyper-V to VMware virtual disks that we will discuss in this blog. Qemu-img can be run in both Windows and Linux operating systems.

If you use Windows as the host operating system, run CMD as Administrator and go to the installation directory of VirtualBox to run VBoxManage. In the current example, VirtualBox is installed in the default directory.

You can add the installation path of VirtualBox to the Path environment variable to avoid going to the VirtualBox installation directory manually each time when you want to run VBoxManage.

Converting VHD to VMDK allows you to convert Hyper-V to VMware virtual machines. You need to import converted virtual disk to your manually created VMware VMs to make the complete VM conversion. This approach can be used for VMs running on VMware Workstation and VMware ESXi. The remaining details of how to convert Hyper-V to VMware are explained in this section.

If you want to create a virtual machine using a virtual disk converted from the VHD (VHDX) format to the VMDK format in VMware Workstation, just create a new VM (or open an existing VM if you want to add a converted virtual disk as an additional virtual disk) and select that you wish to use an existing virtual disk.

Select BIOS as the firmware type in VM options if your source Hyper-V VM was configured to use BIOS. Otherwise, the VMware VM to which you have attached a virtual disk converted from the Hyper-V format to the VMware format will not boot. After a VM is created, you can check this setting by going to VM > Settings, selecting the Options tab > Advanced.

Upload the converted VMDK file to the datastore connected to an ESXi host. Use an SCP client, the web interface of VMware Host Client or VMware vSphere Client for uploading the converted virtual disk vmdk file to the ESXi datastore.

Use vmkfstools to convert a virtual disk of the Workstation format to a virtual disk of the ESXi format. In our example, a thin provisioned virtual disk of the ESXi format is the destination virtual disk type.

Open VMware Host Client (it is most optimal to use VMware vSphere Client if vCenter is deployed, but you can use VMware Host Client in almost all cases including a scenario with ESXi Free Edition if you decided to convert Hyper-V to VMware VMs). In the web interface of VMware Host Client, select Virtual Machines and hit Create/Register VM.

2. Select a name and guest OS. Select the VM version, guest OS family and guest OS version. In this example, the VM name is Win2016converted. The VM is compatible with ESXi 6.5 or later, Windows is the guest OS family and the guest OS version is Microsoft Windows 2016 (64-bit).

4. Customize settings. This step is the most important in our case. Delete the virtual disk that was created by default with the new VM. Then, click Add hard disk > Existing hard disk.

If you would like to convert Hyper-V to VMware on the level of virtual machines, you can convert VHD to VMDK and then attach a converted VMDK virtual disk to a new VMware VM. Qemu-img can be used as a VHD to VMDK converter and VBoxManage can be used as an alternative. Both solutions are free and multi-platform, allowing you to convert Hyper-V VHD to VMware VMDK on different operating systems. Be aware that if you want to use a virtual disk converted with qemu-img or VBoxManage for ESXi VMs, you should convert the VMDK virtual disk from the Workstation format to the ESXi format with vmkfstools in the ESXi command line.

Regardless of the hypervisor you use, data protection is important. NAKIVO Backup & Replication provides a Cross-Platform Recovery feature, which allows you to convert VHD disks from VM backups to VMDK disks and restore Hyper-V VMs to VMware hypervisors.

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I need to convert a vmdk to vhdx to be used with Hyper-V. I converted the file using this:

qemu-img.exe -p -f vmdk -O vhdx -o subformat=dynamic C:\Hyper-V\Imports\VMWare\FreeRadiusAAMES\FreeRadiusAAMES.vmdk C:\Hyper-V\VHDs\FreeRadius.vhdx

Failed to Power on with Error 'The requested operation could not be completed due to a virtual disk system limitation. Virtual hard disk files must be uncompressed and unencrypted and must not be sparse.

Do you want to convert Hyper-V VHD/VHDX to VMware VMDK? Then you arrive at the right page, as we discuss how to do the conversion via a very easy method. The best way to complete the task is using VM converter. There is an effective tool known as DiskGenius that can help you complete the conversion. It is able to convert disks among VHD, VMDK, VDI and physical disk. Let's start the topic now.

These days, virtualization has become one of the most pervading solutions in IT field. The virtual platform makes it possible to save money, easily manage and provide more chances to scale. Till now, a number of virtual machine products are available on the market. Most times, hypervisor vendors own their proprietary VM types which are not compatible with their competitors. Therefore, it is not that easy to deploy one virtual machine on other types. This may come up with the need of converting VM or virtual disk types so that users can realize V2V (virtual machine to virtual machine) migrating.

There are quite a lot of types of virtual disks, such as VMDK, VHD, VHDK, VDI, IMG and many more, and VHD and VMDK are widely used nowadays. VHD (virtual hard disk) is the disk image format used on platforms like Microsoft Virtual PC, Microsoft Virtual Server and Microsoft Hyper-V, while VMDK is used by VMware virtualization software. VHD and VMDK are not compatible with each other, which means you can neither use VHD on VMware appliance products nor use VMDK on Virtual PC. Since VHD and VMDK are used on virtual machine, they should be converted between each other theoretically. In previous guide, we've talked about how to convert VMDK to VHD, and we'll discuss the process of converting VHD to VMDK.

"I've been looking for ways to change a Hyper-V VM to VMware workstation. Currently, there is not luck with this. I've been told PowerShell is able to convert VMDK to VHD in many posts, but that tool cannot do the reserve converting. It seems that few people migrate from Hyper-V to VMware. However, sometimes I need to send out one of my virtual servers to another datacenter who runs VMware there. Anyway, I indeed want to know how to do the converting. Does anyone here have an easy solution to help me? Thanks"

DiskGenius is a full-fledged tool for disk utilities; it is advanced partition manager and meanwhile an effective data recovery program and data backup application. As to viarual disk and partition management, DiskGenius has included almost all useful features. DiskGenius is complete VM converter and it contains P2V, V2P and V2V converter with which you can:

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