Transferring a Virtual Machine From Xenserver to Hyper-V

Exporting a Virtual Machine from Xenserver and then importing it into Hyper-V is not officially supported from any documentation I can find on-line. If you have need for this conversion, and your Virtual Disks are in VHD format, this is really quite simple. The below tutorial will walk you through the steps I took to move a VM from Xenserver to Hyper-V. I have not tested this with virtual disk formats other than the VHD format, so other scenarios are untested and unknown to work or not.

First step: In XenCenter, export the target VM (VM must be shutdown to export) with the OVF/OVA option and be sure to not choose the option to create a single OVA file. Importing to Hyper-V will not work with the single OVA file export. All the remaining default options are fine, choose to verify the export if you desire.

Second step: On the Hyper-V host, create a folder on the hard drive where you will want your VM's files to live. Once the folder is created, copy the VHD and OVF file from the first step to this folder (The VHD file will be named with a large string of letters and numbers).

Third step: In your Hyper-V manager, create a new Virtual Machine and name it as desired. For the VM destination, select the folder created in the second step that contains the VHD and OVF files. Assign the memory and network options and for the virtual disk, select the exported VHD from the above step.

Fourth step: Adjust and fine tune the remaining settings (virtual processors etc...) and then power it up, your all done!

I have tested this by exporting VM's from Xenserver 6.0.2 and 6.1 and importing them to Hyper-V 2012 running in full Server 2012 hosts.

Blessings,

Jesse

How Windows 7 Makes Tech Support Easier

I haven't had a lot of experience with Windows 7 until recently. I work at a local school district and we recently replaced a fairly large selection of computers, and at this point you can no longer purchase licenses for Windows XP - every new computer comes with Windows 7.

This forces the tech department's hand when it comes to upgrading, or in our case running in a mixed environment with the majority of systems running XP and all the new machines from here on out being Windows 7 (or newer).

Granted, Windows 7 does cause issues when it comes to group policy and other issues that arise on a large, domain network. We also find issues with older printers no longer being supported under Windows 7 by either Microsoft of the printer manufacturer. So Windows 7 is not all rosy and great, but there is one big advantage as a Technician that makes my job much easier.

On our network (like most large organizations) individual user accounts have restrictions when it comes to administrating a system and installing software. Under the Windows XP environment, updating or installing software would require logging off of the restricted user and me logging in with my account with administrative rights to perform the needed actions. With some of the older systems and local user policies, it could take quite a while to log in and finish the job. In theory, Windows XP would allow you to enter your credentials to install or run certain programs while logged in as a restricted user, but I never had any success trying to change anything this way.

Now, with the Windows 7 systems I can perform administrative tasks by entering my credentials and being able to function with elevated rights. This is a big improvement, makes my job easier and produces less disruption for the computer user.  All in all I have been pretty impressed with Windows 7 during my exposure with the new systems at work - a definite and huge improvement over past Windows versions for sure.