Converter standalone stalls at 4%, 100% CPU, no error messages

[Bulgie]

Hi,

VMware not-quite-total-newb here.  Trying to convert a Win Server 2008 SP2 64-bit that is a VM running under HyperV, to an ESXi 4.1 (free version).

I installed and ran the standalone converter 4.3.0 (292238) on the OS being converted.  My ESXi is healthy and happy as far as I know, with several VMs running fine on it.

Conversion began normally, created the VM on the ESXi host, cloned the system partition, and began cloning the big data partition (900 GB).  I went home with it at 4% -- expected this to take a long time and was not alarmed when it took longer than the 8 hours it estimated, but at 8 hours it was still at the exact same point, 4%, with the same 8 hours estimated time remaining.

This is a low-priority project so I sorta forgot about it for the next week.  Checked back in @ 1 week and it's still at 4%.  Shows every sign of not being hung, at least the GUI is responsive...  I canceled the conversion, and the status changed to Canceling.  But that was now 2 days ago, it still says canceling, with an Estimated time remaining of 1 minute.  It correctly computes the Estimated completion time, every time I switch to the "Task Progress" tab it gives me the correct local time + 1 minute.

Oh and vmware-converter.exe *32 is using 97-98% of cpu time.

I am OK with transferring the data from that big data volume some other way into a new empty volume on my new VM, if I can get it to boot under ESXi (unknown at this point), but I just want to know how to get out of the state the Converter is in now.  Can I just kill it?

Lemme know if i should upload my log file or any other info you need.

Thanks!

Mark

[bulletprooffool]

The indicator tells you how far you are through the overall process, not the actual clone of the specific disk.

I have never converted something of that size, but from memory, the first disk you migrate will kick in at about 4% of the overall progress.

I would suggest though that you make sure that your network is up to the task, all Nics configured correctly and 900GB of space actually available at the destination.

I assume the task log says that is is infact converting the driv already and it has not paused at one of the previous steps?

[Bulgie]

Thanks for your reply.  To answer your questions:

I have moved virtual disks this size and larger around on my network before, even between those two very servers, so I'm confident the NICs and all network components are working well.  Everything is gigabit full duplex, and the switch shows only a nice low number of dropped packets (not zero but a low number... it was a while ago when I checked but I think the few errors weren't even on the ports in question, the HyperV or the ESXi).

There's terabytes available on the destination.

The last entry in the Log Highlights is "Starting to clone volume 'D:'" -- that's the 900 gig.  Prior to that it gives a success message on completing the clone of the C: drive, and continuing backwards in time, it shows starting the clone of the C: drive, and a success message on creating a snapshot of the source system.

Looks like it just choked on such a large 😧 drive.  That volume contains files only, and low-value ones at that: Acronis backups of workstations, data that all exists somewhere else.  So I'll be content with just getting the new VM running with just a C: drive.  I'm just curious how "Canceling" could take 2+ days at 100 CPU -- what's it doing? (I don't need to know, just curious).

Grateful for any advice on next step.

[CRad14]

I want to clarify, did you install Converter Server or Agent on the machine you want to convert? Because you should be running server from a machine other than the one you are trying to convert. I personally just have Converter Server on my vCenter Server, I know it isn't necessarily best practices, but it works for my environment.

Barring that isn't the issue, here are some random things that come to mind

The first thing I am curious about is what the normal CPU usage is on the source machine without converter?

I am not sure what your source machine is used for, but I would check both into the services that are running on the source to see if there is anything that might be running/started that could affect converter.

The first time you ran converter, it should have installed the agent on the source machine, I would manually uninstall that before the next time I try to run the convert. That way it will have a hopefully fresh install

Always(in my opinion) run converter with the local admin credentials of the machine you are trying to convert, if you use domain credentials it can sometimes do unexpectedly weird things......Along those lines, permissions on the 😧 drive if for some reason they are different, but the local admin should fix that one anyway....

And Finally....

Definitely definitely definitely look into the Windows logs if you haven't already, if Converter isn't throwing errors, there is a good chance windows is...

Let me know how it works out...

[CRad14]

Hey Were you ever able to fix your issue?

[Bulgie]

CRad14 wrote:

Hey Were you ever able to fix your issue?

Yeah pretty much...  I killed the process that was still stuck at "Canceling" several days later.  The VM and the first virtual hard drive (Windows C:\ drive) had been successfully created, and the VM was bootable, so I just made a second, empty drive (attached an iSCSI LUN to the VM) and copied the data from the Hyper-V server rather than try to "convert" that 900 GB vhd.

So I won't ever know what went wrong with Converter, but I don't need to know.