how to convert vmware to xenserver

You must be having a Virtual Private Server rented by some hosting server. You must be having an important business hosted upon that site also may be without internet your business just wouldn’t run. If it is so you must also know about various technologies used to perform the virtualization process. Now when we are talking about these various virtualization platforms, there are many, which come into picture. All most all of them are effective and one better than the other. However, one thing is for sure that you can’t install more than one Virtualization platform. Most of the people who have already purchased the virtual private servers are probably going for the VMware platform which has been leading the pilot role in the field of VPSs. Now there are many reasons why people prefer VMware, one is because the time that VM group has spent developing and refining the VPS technology. They are more than 10 years old company and are dedicated to only development of virtual machines. This is one reason why people prefer VMware than anything else because experience counts, always!.

Even though VMware has been the pioneer in the field, there are other companies, which have come very near to the quality that VMware provides and also the competitors are biting the customers with a price tag that is multiple times lesser than that of the VMware. One such company is Citrix. Citrix has come out with XenServer which is the only 64bit virtualization platform in the market, and it has introduced a couple of more features, which are way to be better than the VMware or Microsoft’s Virtual Server 2005. The best thing about the Citrix’s XenServer is the fact that it is much cheaper than the counterpart VMware. Thus there are many reasons as to why you might want to shift from the VMware to XenServer. The cost might be one among them. If at all you decide to move from the VMware to XenServer, then here is the short guide to do the same. No, it is not rocket science. It is quite simple and you can easily follow it.

Let’s get the recipe ready, let us first tell you the things that you might require. First of all, you need the administrator level access to your VPS, which has been installed with the VMware and this is what you are going to convert to XenServer. You also need to have an access to the XenServer or the XenCenter. If you don’t know about OVF (Open Virtual Platform) then it might prove difficult to you to perform this migration, you better know what it means and then read ahead.

Let’s begin cooking. First of all, find out, which is the exact VM you want to export. First of log on to that particular VM and through start go to control panel and get into “add or remove programs” and uninstall the VMware tools. Just make sure that VMware tools are completely removed before you proceed further because if they are present during the further installation, they might create other uncertain problems.

The next step is to make sure you have deleted all the snapshots that are located with the VM. Just give a complete search for the VM keywords and make sure you have deleted any files that are even distantly related to the VMware platform. Once all these things are done, just disable the “Automount” feature that is available in the VMs of Windows. If at all you had enabled the manifests in the VMware workstations, then make sure to delete any .mf file so that you can later enable the import.

The next procedure is an important one as we’ll understand how to export OVF packages from VMware. Almost all the tools provided by the VMware supports the OVF format. Thus get into your VMware and from File–>Export—-> just export the template to some directory in the OVF format. You have to be certain that the format used is OVF as this is the only cross platform format which is supported and read. After sometime the export will finish, and once the export is finished, copy the entire directory structure of the exported files onto the XenServer workstation. Do not alter the directory structure of the source too.

Now open the XenConvert tool and convert the exported OVF package to the XenServer format. Next you have to suggest your choice of verifying the content or the author. In the following screen, you have to enter the user name and password and also the host name of the Xenserver so that you can directly convert OVF package. Hit Convert to begin the conversion process. This might take a while.

After you are done with this Its all a piece of pie and all you have to do is follow the instruction to convert the VMDK hard disk files to XenServer’s VHD using XenConvert. Once done you have can import the same VHD into the XenCenter and make further settings. Happy Conversion!