Convert OVA to VHDX for Hyper-V

If you have found yourself in a scenario where you would like to use Hyper-V as a test environment for your virtual machines, but you are using VMware ESXi Server,Citrix XenServer or VirtualBox then this tutorial is for you.

In this article we are going to detail the steps required to convert an OVA export from ESXi into a VHDX file for use with Hyper-V. The first thing you need to do is get an OVA export from ESXi. To do this you must first open the VMware vSphere Client and shutdown the virtual machine you would like to export. Once the shutdown is complete, you will want to select “File > Export > Export OVF Template” as seen in the picture below. Next, you will be prompted for a location to save and the type of template to export. Here you will want to choose OVA. It is important to understand that OVA’s are basically tar.gz archives with a .ova file extension. With that being said, we can extract them using 7-Zip. Next we will want to extract our OVA with 7-Zip to a folder of the same name as the virtual machine, which in this case is Debian8. Once the file is extracted you can proceed below.

Required software

• Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter 3.0 available here.
• Your OVA export unzipped into a folder.

Preparations

• Download and install Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter 3.0.

Convert The Image

Next we will need to convert our VMware Image in order for Hyper-V to run it. This can be done using Powershell as seen below.

# Import the Converter Powershell Module
Import-Module "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter\MvmcCmdlet.psd1"
# Convert the VMware .vmdk to a Hyper-V .vhdx
ConvertTo-MvmcVirtualHardDisk -SourceLiteralPath "D:\Debian8\Debian8-disk1.vmdk" -DestinationLiteralPath "D:\Debian8.vhdx" -VhdType DynamicHardDisk -VhdFormat Vhdx

Using The Image

In order to use our newly created image we must first create a new Hyper-V virtual machine or edit one that has been previously created. Important notes below.

• When creating your new virtual machine, you must ensure you select “Generation 1” when choosing the generation of the virtual machine.
• The converted image can be moved to any location you choose.

Once you have completed all the steps above, you should have a fully working copy of your virtual machine running on Hyper-V.