StarWind V2V Converter Update: Hot VM Migration and More New Features

Introduction

Hi, fellow IT admins and everyone interested in learning more about cool IT stuff. We live in a world where we continuously work with various virtualization platforms, and sometimes we need to migrate virtual machines from one hypervisor to another. Obviously, different hypervisors have different VM file formats that are not cross-compatible. That’s where you need a so-called virtual-to-virtual (V2V) conversion tool. Some virtualization platform vendors offer their own tools, but they are often limited in terms of features or provide only one-way conversion – from source to their own platform.

That’s where StarWind V2V Converter steps in. It does exactly what its name suggests: It converts a VM from your current hypervisor into a format that your new hypervisor understands. What are the benefits? It’s free, universally compatible, and extremely easy to use.

Many of you reading this article are already familiar with our V2V Converter, or have used it. However, the purpose of this article is not to introduce you to this software. Today, I will discuss the latest StarWind V2V Converter updates and show you its quirks and features that have been recently released.

Features overview

So, today, folks, we will discuss a couple of new features that we introduced in the latest build of our V2V Converter that you, by the way, can already download from our website by following this link. The features include:

1. Converting VMs to and from Oracle VirtualBox
2. Converting VMs to oVirt
3. VM “hot” migration from Microsoft Hyper-V to VMware ESXi hosts.

So, without further ado, let me show how easily you can do those conversions.

Conversion of Oracle VirtualBox VM

Let’s start by looking at the conversion of the Oracle VirtualBox VM. Like with any other options, the steps are very simple and straightforward:
1. Open StarWind V2V Converter and choose the “VirtualBox” option:

2. Now, enter the hostname or IP address and specify the credentials of the VirtualBox host:

3. After that, select the VM that you would like to convert. My VM is called “VMBox-article”:

IMPORTANT NOTE: The VM should be powered off before starting the conversion.

4. Now, we need to select the destination platform. In my case, that’s Microsoft Hyper-V Server:

5. Then we enter the IP address and credentials of the target Windows Server:

6. To finish the preparations for the conversion, we need to confirm the settings of the new VM:

7. After this, let’s just sit and wait until the conversion is completed. The conversion speed depends on the VM size, your storage speed, and network performance:

 

NOTE: In some cases, you could see the error message stating: “Incorrect credentials to VBox Host.”

To fix this error, you’ll need to do the following:

Oracle VB web server uses the 18083 port for communication, so check if your firewall is not blocking this port for incoming and outgoing connections. Also, check which network adapter the VB web server uses to create connections.

After this, o pen Command Prompt, go to the VirtualBox folder, and start the VirtualBox web service:

That’s it!

The process of converting the VM to Oracle VirtualBox is identical to what you have already seen, so I will not repeat it.

VM conversion to oVirt

Converting VMs to oVirt is also similar to what we did with Oracle VirtualBox VM, however, the final steps have additional settings that I would like to show. So, let’s have a look at it.

1. First, open StarWind V2V Converter and select the source of the conversion. In my case, it is Microsoft Hyper-V Server:

2. Enter the IP address or the hostname of the source server and specify credentials. Or use Windows authentication if you are running V2V Converter on the source server:

3. Now select the VM that you would like to convert:

IMPORTANT NOTE: The VM should be powered off before starting the conversion.

4. Now we need to choose oVirt as the target virtualization platform:

5. Specify the URL of the oVirt Engine and the credentials of the oVirt Engine admin account:

6. Now we need to configure the new VM that is going to be created in the destination oVirt environment:

7. Once again, we’ll need to wait until the process is completed to start using our converted VM in oVirt:

Hot migration from Hyper-V to VMware

With this feature of the StarWind V2V Converter, you can convert Hyper-V VMs to VMware almost on the fly. What does ‘almost’ mean? It means you can convert the running VM without needing to turn it off on the source hypervisor until the process is finished.

At the beginning of the conversion process, before moving any data, StarWind V2V Converter will take a snapshot of the live VM state on the source host. When the conversion is completed, the converter will turn off the VM on the source host and transfer all the changes made after the snapshot was taken to the newly converted VM on the destination hypervisor.

Hot migration allows you to minimize VM downtime, which is especially important when converting business-critical VMs with lots of data.

Why no live migration? Because it requires shared storage and a cluster of similar hypervisor hosts.
That’s enough theory — let’s get to the practical part!

1. Open StarWind V2V Converter and choose the “Microsoft Hyper-V Server” option:

2. Enter the IP address and credentials of your Hyper-V server:

3. Select the VM to convert:

4. Select the drives that need to be converted and tick the “Synchronization” checkbox, which is necessary to enable hot migration:

5. Our next step is to select the destination platform – the ESXi server:

6. Next, specify the ESXi or vCenter server IP address and credentials:

7. The following step is to specify the target ESXi host and settings of the new VM:

8. Now, let’s wait until the conversion is completed:

After the conversion is complete, verify the new VM settings and test it in an isolated environment outside of the production network to avoid overlapping with the original VM that is still running on your source hypervisor. When ready, shut down your source VM and start up the new one. That’s it!

Summary

I hope you learned more today about how to accomplish the sometimes cumbersome task of converting your VMs to a different hypervisor. Also, now you know that there is an amazing piece of software you can use to make that process much easier, with minimum downtime and absolutely for free.