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Migration from Hyper-V to VMware


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I need to migrate 12 Windows Server 2016 from Hyper-V to vcenter, can I do this with Veeam just restore from the last Hyper-v backup to vcenter?

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Best answer by coolsport00 30 January 2024, 15:31

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Userlevel 7
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You sure can :)

Shut down the VMs before a final backup to prevent data loss, and then you can do an instant VM recovery to start the servers up from the backup storage directly for near zero downtime, and then migrate these across onto the production storage, via Storage vmotion if licensed or otherwise via Veeam’s quick migration (Quick Migration - User Guide for VMware vSphere (veeam.com))

 

Hope this helps!

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Hi @dario72 

Backup your Vm on HyperV and use Veeam Instant Recovery on Vmware.

This can help:

Converting Hyper-V VMs to VMware using Veeam | rhyshammond.com

 

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If you already have image level backups of those Hyper-V VMs already, Veeam can directly start those on VMware - either vCenter or directly on an ESX host. You just have to use Instant-Recovery for it. 

Veeam automatically takes care of the V2V process needed.

Just make sure to install VMware tools afterwards.

Veeam can even handle many other sources via this process: Instant Recovery to VMware vSphere - User Guide for VMware vSphere (veeam.com)

Userlevel 7
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Hi @dario72 -

A former Veeam Vanguard (now Veeam SE) has a nice little “how-to” blog using Instant Recovery. See below:

https://rhyshammond.com/converting-hyper-v-vms-to-vmware-using-veeam/

Hope this helps!

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Hi, this is something very useful and “easy” from Veeam.

I’d suggest you to run a test with a Test server, 

run the “normal” backups on your Hyper-v machines
shut down the vms,
take the final incremental backup,
Full restore in the new vmware environment.
after some test, decommission the vms in the Hyper-v environment.

or

Create vm replicas of the Hyper-v vms into the vmware environment.

once the replicas are done, you can:

Planned Failover into those replicas.
Veeam will take a snapshot in the hyper-v, shut them off, move the data into the vmware environment and run those vms from the new hosts / storage.

after test that everything is ok, you can tell veeam to keep the failover replicas as new prod.
you will be done with the migration.

in case of testing goes not ok, simply undo the failover, and the vms will be executed again from the Hyper-v.

You can do this in small groups of vms, to check that everything goes well.

but as I said, and I think is very important, TEST!
try the solutions and choose the one that is more suitable for you.
write down a plan, and follow it, so you don't miss anything.
 

there are multiple ways of doing this, all depends on the downtime window, vms size, etc.

cheers.

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Next to installing the vmware-tools, don’t forget to uninstall the hyper-v integration tools.

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Hi @Nico Losschaert. Not totally sure, as I’m more of a VMware than Hyper-V guy. But aren’t the integration services for Hyper-V integrated into Windows OS’es already? So at least for Windows workloads to my knowledge no need to uninstall anything.

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I think @Michael Melter is correct. It only needs Hyper-V hosts earlier than Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10.

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Hi @dario72 -

I believe the info we shared was able to assist with your question. If not, please let us know.

If a post did assist you, please mark a ‘Best Answer’ to help others who have a similar query find a resolution.

Thank you.

Userlevel 7
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Hi @dario72 -

A former Veeam Vanguard (now Veeam SE) has a nice little “how-to” blog using Instant Recovery. See below:

https://rhyshammond.com/converting-hyper-v-vms-to-vmware-using-veeam/

Hope this helps!

hahaha that's the same link I posted earlier :)

Userlevel 7
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Hi @dario72 -

A former Veeam Vanguard (now Veeam SE) has a nice little “how-to” blog using Instant Recovery. See below:

https://rhyshammond.com/converting-hyper-v-vms-to-vmware-using-veeam/

Hope this helps!

 

Thanks for this.  I have a client I’m going to be migrating from Hyper-V to VMware shortly...as soon as I get their new hosts setup.  I haven’t yet had a chance to do my due diligence on the best method for this, but I had assumed it was either going to be Veeam or the VMware vCenter Standalone Converter, but Veeam will make this much easier and this looks like a great starting point for me as well.

Userlevel 7
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Next to installing the vmware-tools, don’t forget to uninstall the hyper-v integration tools.

 

This got me the other day.  The Hyper-V integration tools left behind a Hyper-V VSS writer causing Application-aware backups to fail because it wasn’t able to take proper VSS snapshots due to the writer being listed in the registry but missing.  Once I removed that registry entry and rebooted, all was well.  Seems like a lot of folks about the cleanup function after a P2V or V2V migration across platforms, but this is really quite critical.

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Thanks for the share @coolsport00 and @Link State!

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