VMware converter 5.0 will crash when using vCenter 5.1 as destination

[gamania]

converter 5.0 will crash when vcenter is upgraded to 5.1. Does anybody know any temp work around or fix? thanks

[Lasse_T]

arnaudov , Many thanks for the update and making the Converter a priority!

I'll hang fire for a little while and wait for the new version

[_felix_]

How much longer until we have a working standalone converter to convert Physical to ESXi 5.1?

[trafsta]

Any approximate ETAs as to when Converter will be compatible with ESXi 5.1? If it's going to be months then it would be great to know so we can make alternate plans to get our 15-20 Hyper-V servers converted to ESXi 5.1 (including a bunch of Server 2012 VMs). Converter 4.3 works but sure does take a heck of a lot of extra steps to get things exactly the way we want it. Also we need to shrink a bunch of over-privisioned thin disks and converter 4.3 is throwing errors when attempting to do this so I think we need to know a timeline to determine what our next steps will be - a bunch of our Hyper-V servers are thin provisioned with 500GB+ OS drives and we want to use Fault Tolerance on a few of these which will require them to convert to eagerzerodthick drives and really only 30GB or so are being used on the drives so we need a working Converter to convert them down to 50GB or so before switching on fault tolerance... I haven't found any easy ways to do this without a working version of Converter (v4.3 just gives errors...).

[EricBowen]

Odd that their priority is over 2 weeks late.

I'm just astounded that this wasn't addresses pre-release.

Bub

[Bigi201110141]

Looks like no QA was done for this version and was rushed. Looks like we are doing the QA for them.

Not something you would expect from the #1 Leader in Virtualization.

Support requests are delayed with no responses for days. Which was not the case sometime ago.

In the mean time they are introducing crap that no one needs or wants. Mutli HyperVisor Management of Hyper-V.

[B0RlS]

Where is the official statement - when we will able to use standalone converter with  ESXi 5.1?

How much longer must we wait?

[mjbtechie]

It's hard to get to  that actual cloud when the virtual roads are closed for construction. It's my cloud but I guess I don't own it. I'd really like to be able to use the full vSphere suite, Right Here, Right Now.

[trafsta]

Yeah this is really killing our new deployment of VMWare. We are a Hyper-V 2008 R2 shop that just implemented our first two SANs, and we want to start converting from Hyper-V to vSphere v5.1 (need 5.1 cause of Windows Server 2012 VMs) and because our testing has found too many extra steps required with Converter v4.3 we are on-hold for our testing till this is resolved. Thing is we are down to 20-30 days on our trial of vSphere 5.1/ESXi Hosts 5.1, etc, and we haven't pulled the trigger on the purchase of the VMWare licenses since we haven't tested the Hyper-V to ESXi conversion enough! To blow $20-30k on licenses for a product that you haven't been able to fully and properly evaluate is really, well, crazy So we are on hold for now...

[harley3k]

For what it's worth, the older versions of the converter does work.

Several here on this thread have used it, as have I.

We were in the same situation with the trial running out, and have successfully migrated several servers from 2008R2 Hyper-V to vmWare using the 4.3 converter.

See a few pages back in the thread for details.

regards,

-Harold

[trafsta]

Yes I have used it and it does work (4.3), but not very well, extra steps are required from what we have seen, and I get all kinds of errors when trying to do a conversion on a ESXi VM once it is already on the ESXi host... also because our Hyper-V VM HDs were 2.0TB (thin provisioned) I need to convert them all to smaller sizes and converter 4.3 throws generic errors that we have not been able to get around when trying to resize those disks during the conversion. I have converted most of our Hyper-V environment via 4.3 via multiple workarounds but honestly I would much rather see a 100% working v5.x product in testing prior to making this purchase because the 4.3 route to convert dozens of VMs is just too time consuming and too much can go wrong.

[mrichter]

This is such BS.

[wayne7215]

Unbelievable, we have several VM's with a vmdk size of 2'147'484'000 thick provisioned, what is even not over the limit, but we can't take snapshots anymore with this size. So Support told us just to convert them V2V and to thin provisioned with vCenter Converter 5 to shrink the vmdk! Too bad all our servers are on 5.1 already :smileyangry:

[continuum]

Setting up a virtual ESXi 5.0 inside a ESXi 5.1 VM is a matter of a few minutes ...

[mrichter]

The situation (not workarounds) is still BS. And not all of us have spare ESXI licenses floating around.

[continuum]

You do not need a license for that at all - just setup a ESXi VM and give it access to your SAN.
No need to add it to your vCenter

I use a ESXi 5.0 LiveCD for this tasks - thats even faster than setting up a ESXi VM

[wayne7215]

Ulli Hankeln schrieb:

Setting up a virtual ESXi 5.0 inside a ESXi 5.1 VM is a matter of a few minutes ...

Not really because our VM's with the 2 TB vmdk is running already on 5.1, it's a V2V we have to do, not a P2V.

@continuum in your case you can just use the 60 day trial license.

[continuum]

? - why do you need Converter for V2V ?

[wayne7215]

wayne1 schrieb:

Unbelievable, we have several VM's with a vmdk size of 2'147'484'000 thick provisioned, what is even not over the limit, but we can't take snapshots anymore with this size. So Support told us just to convert them V2V and to thin provisioned with vCenter Converter 5 to shrink the vmdk! Too bad all our servers are on 5.1 already :smileyangry:

If you would have read my comment you would know

We need to shrink the thick provisioned 2TB vmdk to a size of 1.9TB, that's what Vmware support suggested us to being able again to take snapshots.

[continuum]

I did read your commen tand understood it.
But that task can also be done with other methods - that may even be faster and it sure is more reliable ...
Create new thin 1.9 Tb vmdk and attach it to the VM you already have.
Boot that VM into a Windows LiveCD with ghost32.
Clone disk to disk - and tell ghost32 to resize on the fly.

That works like a charm.

Why VMware support suggests to do that with Converter is beyond me ...

[wayne7215]

Woooow, nice idea I will give that a try, thank you! Sometimes I can't see the wood for the trees :smileylaugh: