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
Run the installer
Click next on welcome page
Click next on agreement page
Click I agree and click next
Click next on the installation destination
Select client-server installation and click next (I will use this machine to run all my conversions )
Click next on the components page
Accept the default and click next
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.
Untick Join and click next
Click install
Click finish
Click yes to reboot system
Open VMware convertor
Click connect to a local server and click login
Click convert machine
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
If you get the below error message
Unable to contact the specified host
Turn off windows firewall on remote machine
Try again
Click yes to install agent
If you get the below error message
Insufficient permissions to connect to
Use the administrator account from the remote machine
Try again
Click yes to continue
If you get the below error message
Unable to complete installation/uninstallation of converter agent on
Try to lower your user account control settings on the remote machine
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
After agent is install on remote machine
Try the convertor again
Click ignore certificate
Select the target location and target credentials (I am using my vcenter details)
Click next
Click ignore
Give the virtual machine a name and click next
Select a esxi host, storage, virtual machine version and click next
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
Click finish
If you get the following error message
A file I/O error occurred while accessing
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
Retry
Should start the conversion
Completed
Virtual machine is now available in my vcenter
Power on and ready to use
