VMware runs on Longhorn but there are issues so I opted for the MS product. While VMware is feature filled there are advantages to the Microsoft Product. I have a WEB / FTP / DNS server running as a VMware guest which I wanted to clone from VMware to MSVM. While a convetor does exist I found it fails 90% of the time and I have given up on it for now. What I did in this cast was try two differing stratigies.

OS = W2kserver

1) do a full NTbackup - create a blank W2Ksvr install and do a full restore. The reboot of the guest machine then stalled at the black bar phase of boot up so I attached to an ISO and ran a full OS repair. This worked however it took overnight to run through the hardware and driver install and once up took some cleanup to get all the services running correctly.

2) Use Acronis to do an image and restore this to a blank VHD - results were almost identical to the the NTbackup method however the initial restore was much faster as I did not need to install a blank machine I only needed to create a blank HD.

Lessons learned so far - remove VMware tools and any programs, drivers related to VMware as MSVM does not know how to handle these. Remove any programs not needs or ones that may be reinstalled easily. Like Logmein and antivirus programs, this will reduce conflict and speed up the process.

VM to VM seems more difficult than the P2V type conversions and so far I have found no fast and easy way of reaching my goals. This is a good work around and still much better than a flat reinstall especially when the original machine has a multitude of programs and services running as most MS machines do.

Any more insite would certainly be appriciated.