Converting to VMware

Updated

When restoring a virtual machine from backup, you can choose to restore the VM as a VMware virtual machine. Using this option, you can duplicate a virtual machine to the VMware environment or migrate a VM to VMware.

Source Hypervisors

You can convert VMs to VMware from the following hypervisors:

  • Amazon

  • Azure Resource Manager streaming backups

    You cannot convert encrypted Azure disks to VMware.

  • Hyper-V streaming backups

Note: For Azure Resource Manager and Hyper-V, you cannot convert Ubuntu 16.x VMs or Ubuntu 18.x VMs to VMware.

Before You Begin

  • Create a VMware hypervisor client to restore to. For more information, see Configuring Backups for VMware VMs.

  • Before performing backups that you use for conversions, make the following changes on source VMs:

    • For Linux VMs, add required SCSI drivers and recompile the initrd file.

      If you do not perform this step for Linux VMs, the converted VMs fail to power on. To enable the VMs to power on, use a live recovery image of the Linux operating system to access the terminal, and then perform this step on the converted VMs.

    • Configure source VMs to use DHCP instead of using static IP addresses. The conversion process does not restore static IP addresses.

  • Install drivers on VMs running CentOS or RHEL. For more information, see Preparing UNIX VMs for Conversion to VMware.

    Note: You do not need to install drivers on VMs running Windows.

  • As a best practice, configure the server plan that is used for backups to create a backup copy using on-premises storage, and use the backup copy as the source for conversion.

Procedure

  1. From the navigation pane, go to Protect > Virtualization.

    The Virtual machines page appears.

  2. Click the VM groups tab.

    The VM group page appears.

  3. Under VM groups area, in the row for the VM group that contains the VM, click the action button and then click Restore.

    The Select restore type page appears.

  4. Select Full instance to restore one or more full virtual machines.

    The Restore options dialog box appears.

  5. Select the content to restore, and then click Restore.

    The Restore options dialog box appears.

  6. Select Out of place.

  7. In the Restore as field, select VMware vCenter.

  8. In the Destination field, select the VMware hypervisor that you created in "Before You Begin", above.

  9. Fill in other fields as required.

  10. Click Submit to run the restore job.