Nothing to see here

Nothing to see here header image 2
← Remote Tech Support Network Monitor on XP →

VMware to Hyper-V migration easier than expected

August 11th, 2008 · 6 Comments

Last week I was given the opportunity to perform my first ever VMware to Hyper-V migration. This was primarily done to get the Exchange 2003 virtual machine on a supported platform so Microsoft’s PSS would support it. VMDK to VHD conversion takes a while, but was very straightforward. Everything else is documented here. 

  1. On VMware virtual machine, set Exchange and SMTP services to manual
  2. Shut down virtual machine
  3. Create a backup of the VMDK and related files for OS (C:\) partition
  4. Add and IDE disk to the virtual machine to enable IDE drivers in Windows and make the Hyper-V converted disk easier to boot.
  5. Remove Exchange’s mail store VMDK disk (E:\) from the virtual machine’s configuration to ensure no data is changed on that partition.
  6. Disable networking in VMware console so that any changes made are confined to the local machine.
  7. Boot working copy of Exchange OS partition
  8. Log on as local admin
  9. Uninstall VMware tools and reboot VM when prompted
  10. Cancel “Found new hardware wizard” and do not reboot when asked
  11. Verify IDE drive is present & drivers loaded
  12. Append C:\windows\system32\hal.dll and ntoskrnl.exe with .bak extensions and copy versions from C:\windows\servicepackfiles\i386 to replace the versions in the system32 folder.
  13. Run prepvm.vbs created by Chris Wolf
  14. Shut down the server
  15. Copy modified VMDK files for OS partition (one 20GB and one 1KB) to LUN on IBM SAN for Hyper-V server (arch-host-09) to use
  16. Convert VMDK file to VHD file using the VMDK to VHD converter from vmtoolkit.com
  17. Link VHD to VM in Hyper-V and boot the file. The following steps were used for troubleshooting.
    1. Booted to Windows 2003 server OS CD to run recovery console
    2. Added a line in boot.ini with arguments “/bootlog /sos /safeboot:minimal” which enabled the system to boot into safe mode.
    3. Rebooted server and chose normal boot-up
    4. Copied halaacpi.dll from C:\windows\servicepackfiles\i386 to overwrite C:\windows\system32\hal.dll
    5. Reboot server normally
    6. Opened “System” in Control Panel to remove reference to the old hal.dll in the Computer properties.
    7. Rebooted system
  18. Installed Hyper-V add-ons and rebooted.

Surprisingly, that’s all it took.  Step 17.4 took a little while to figure out because I kept getting an error message about ACPI-compatible hal.dll when trying to install the Hyper-V add-ons.

 

Tags: Computing

6 responses so far ↓

  • 1 Bryan Wall // Feb 6, 2009 at 8:02 am

    Did you mean vmtoolkit.com? (Step 16) vmtools.com is a spam site…

  • 2 admin // Feb 6, 2009 at 8:29 am

    Good catch! I updated that post. Thanks for the comment.

  • 3 Alan Surrette // Apr 2, 2009 at 8:31 am

    I’m mirgating 5 VM guests to Hyper-V now. The two Server 2003 VMs migrated just fine. I actually used VMWare Converter 4 and the VMDK to VHD converter tool. Then, I installed the HV components and manually uninstalled the VMTools and VMWare Converter. It worked well on those. This process has not worked so well on teh three Windows 2000 VMs. Everything seems ok, except about 12-15 services will not start automatically. I can manually start them, but that’s not really an option. In hopes of solving the issue, I downloaded the evaluation version of SCVMM (which IS really awesome, BTW). It converts the machines much faster, but gives me the same issue. If anyone has any ideas, I would love to hear them! I may try something more along the lines of your process next. Thanks!

  • 4 Alan Surrette // Apr 2, 2009 at 12:35 pm

    http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/virtualmachinemgrp2vv2v/threads

    Found it in the forums… After uninstalling the Backup Exec agent, everything works just fine!

    Thanks.

  • 5 admin // Apr 2, 2009 at 1:44 pm

    Nice find! Thanks for the feedback.

  • 6 Matthew Kaye // Sep 12, 2009 at 6:04 am

    This is a great guide. Let me add a couple of things I came across. I could not install the Hyper-V add-ons because only acpi multiprocessor pc is supported, however I had made the changes on the hal as directed above. I came across and article that said to remove Standard PC under Computer in devise manager and then I could install the addons. I also recomment adding the boot.ini option before converting yr machine.

Leave a Comment