Part 1 – Prep the VMware VM
Uninstall VM Tools and VMware Converter Agent from within the OS
Make sure it’s checked as Independent in VMware by right clicking the machine name, then choose “Edit Settings”.
Part 2 – Copy the full VM to where you want the conversion to happen
Use Veeam Backup and FastSCP to copy the whole VM folder to somewhere on a HyperV machine to do the conversion
Part 3 – Convert to HyperV
Now use the StarWind V2V converter to convert the machine to HyperV
Choose the Microsoft VHDX image option
Hit next then Make a new folder to place the vhdx file in. In this example, it’s going in E:\VMs\servername\
From HyperV Manager, choose New / Virtual Machine
Name it and say where you want to store the files
Choose Generation 1 Since this is a Windows 2003 Machine
2048 for Startup memory and check the box for Use Dynamic Memory for this virtual machine.
VSwitch 1
Since we converted our machine with the Starwind converter, we choose the vhdx file that was created earlier.
It should now be showing up correctly in HyperV
Part 5 – Verify settings and start it up
From HyperV hit “Settings”
Set the number of processors, I’ll leave this to 1 for now
Check over the other settings such as the Memory.
From HyperV hit “Connect…”
Start the machine and see if it works
It will have a lot of drivers to update and install, it might even ask you to call into Microsoft to activate it because of all the hardware changes. At this point, the mouse doesn’t work so well so you might just try inserting the Integration Services Setup disk and hoping for the best. That went pretty well and now the mouse actually works allowing us to reboot.
We still don’t have Internet so that’s next
Setup the correct IP address and associated settings
Now that you have internet, try connecting directly to the server with UVNC to clean it up.
Part 5 – Cleanup
When everything is done, delete the orignal VM folder that was copied over for the conversion.