VMware convertor is used to convert physical machines to virtual machines and can be used as a migration tool.
It’s a great light tool once you get past the initial issues which you will see below.
In this blog I will walk through the setup and converting one of my intel nucs to a virtual machine into my vcenter
Download VMware convertor
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Run the installer
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Click next on welcome page
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Click next on agreement page
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Click I agree and click next
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Click next on the installation destination
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Select client-server installation and click next (I will use this machine to run all my conversions )
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Click next on the components page
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Accept the default and click next
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If you have an error message port 443 is already in use, check you have VMware workstation stopped in windows services as it uses this port.
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Untick Join and click next
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Click install
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Click finish
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Click yes to reboot system
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Open VMware convertor
Click connect to a local server and click login
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Click convert machine
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My machine is power on so select Powered on
Ensure remote windows machine is selected
Type in the credentials and ip address of the remote machine
Click next
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If you get the below error message
Unable to contact the specified host
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Turn off windows firewall on remote machine
Try again
Click yes to install agent
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If you get the below error message
Insufficient permissions to connect to
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Use the administrator account from the remote machine
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Try again
Click yes to continue
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If you get the below error message
Unable to complete installation/uninstallation of converter agent on
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Try to lower your user account control settings on the remote machine
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If still not working install agent on remote computer manually
Agent can be found in the following directory
C:\Program Files (x86)\VMware\VMware vCenter Converter Standalone
VMware-Converter-Agent.exe
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After agent is install on remote machine
Try the convertor again
Click ignore certificate
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Select the target location and target credentials (I am using my vcenter details)
Click next
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Click ignore
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Give the virtual machine a name and click next
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Select a esxi host, storage, virtual machine version and click next
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Edit any setting you would like (usually I would modify some services to disable as they are hardware related, modify the port group on the nic settings, specify if I just want to do a sync )
Click next
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Click finish
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If you get the following error message
A file I/O error occurred while accessing
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Make sure your remote machine and the machine your running VMware converter from can access the vcenter and esxi hosts via dns name even if you used ip address when running convertor.
You can update the host file on a windows machine in the following path
C:\Windows\System32\drivers\etc\hosts
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Retry
Should start the conversion
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Completed
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Virtual machine is now available in my vcenter
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Power on and ready to use
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