VMware vCenter Converter Standalone | Guide and Alternative

What is VMware vCenter Converter

If you choose VMware products to create and manage virtual machines, whether it is the Type-1 hypervisor VMware ESXi or the Type-2 hypervisor VMware Workstation, you must have heard of an official virtual machine migration and conversion tool, VMware vCenter Converter Standalone.

VMware vCenter Converter is a freeware standalone tool providing the possibility to convert virtual workloads running on third-party hypervisors and powered-on physical machines into VMware virtual machines.

VMware vCenter Converter Standalone provides an intuitive wizard-driven interface and a centralized management console, eases the exchange of VMware virtual machines from physical machines and from other virtual machine formats.

This article covers an overview of VMware vCenter Converter Standalone as well as an effective replacement for it.

Is VMware vCenter Converter still available?

If you follow VMware vCenter Converter Standalone, then you probably know that VMware had published an announcement on February 2, 2022 that vCenter Converter was completely removed from the Product Downloads list.

According to VMware, this removal is because VMware Converter has not been updated in a long time and has some potential security concerns. The risks reached a level where VMware had no choice but to remove it from the download site.

Therefore, if you have previously downloaded vCenter Converter, you can still continue using it. But if you have not, you will have to download it from other random sites, or try another P2V software.

Updated: vCenter Converter is Back

VMware had also promised a renewed version of vCenter Converter, and here it comes, the improved version compatible with vSphere 7.0 and ESXi 7.0!

The new version is said mostly focus on improving the stability and security standards of the Converter and keeping the existing functionality and user experience. You can click here to download it.

The new VMware vCenter Converter supports the following platforms:

Quick guide for VMware vCenter Converter Standalone

VMware vCenter Converter Standalone provides a set of features to convert physical and virtual machines:

• P2V Migration: Convert running remote physical machines (running Windows or Linux) as virtual machines and import to standalone ESX/ESXi or to ESX/ESXi hosts that vCenter Server manages.
• V2V Migration: Convert virtual machines hosted by VMware Workstation or Microsoft Hyper-V Server and import to standalone ESX/ESXi or ESX/ESXi hosts that vCenter Server manages, or export virtual machines managed by vCenter Server hosts to other VMware virtual machine formats.
• Cloning: Local and remote hot or cold cloning to VMware hosted products (Workstation, VMware Player, VMware Server) and ESX/ESXi.
• Configuration: Configure virtual machines managed by vCenter Server so that they are bootable, and install VMware Tools or customize their guest operating systems.

How to convert physical machine to virtual machine with vCenter Converter

Here I will show you how to use the P2V Migration feature to convert physcial machine to VMware VM.

1. Launch VMware vCenter Converter Standalone. Click Convert machine button on the toolbar to open the Conversion wizard.

2. On Source System tab, select source type as Powered on or Powered off, and select Remote Windows machine option from the drop down menu.

Provide credentials for the connection, and click Next.

3. It will pop up a window to inform you that the Converter agent needs to be temporarily installed on the remote source machine.

You need to choose whether to automatically uninstall the agent when import succeeds or not. Click Yes to continue.

4. On Destination System tab, select VMware Infrastructure virtual machine as the destination type, and provide VMware server connection credentials. Then click Next.

5. On Destination Virtual Machine tab, provide an inventory Name for the new VM, and click Next.

6. On Destination Location tab, select the target ESXi host, Datastore, and Virtual machine version. Click Next.

Tip: If you want to convert to VMware Workstation, Fusion, or Player:
On Destination System, select VMware Workstation or other VMware virtual machine as the destination type, and select VMware product from the drop down menu.

7. On Options tab, browse Current settings and optionally Edit the parameters for the conversion task. Then click Next to continue.

8. On Summary tab, review the settings and click Finish to start conversion. You can see the progress in Recent Tasks.

An effective replacement for VMware vCenter Converter

If for some reason you can't use VMware vCenter Converter Standalone, or if you have more granular needs for P2V migration - such as migrating specific data, or migrating a historical version of a physical machine image, you can also use another secure alternative product to perform P2V migration in VMware.

Here I will introduce you an effective alternative P2V software: AOMEI Centralized Backupper. As the name suggests, it's a backup & restore software that can backup endpoints (physical or virtual machines) on the network centrally.

By installing backup agent on your virtual machine, you can backup and restore your virtual machine as it is a physical machine, and perform File, System, Disk, Partition, and SQL Server auto backup every day between physical and virtual machines.

Next, I will show you how to perform P2V migration VMware via AOMEI Centralized Backupper. You can click the following button to start a free trial.

How to perform P2V with vCenter Converter alternative

1. Launch AOMEI Centralized Backupper, and navigate to Computers > Uncontrolled Computers. Check your physical machine and the virtual machine (with a static IP) from the Computers list, and click Request Control.

It will pop up a request window on both of the machines, once you are authorized you can backup whenever you like.

2. Navigate to Tasks > New Task > Disk Backup.

3. There are 3 steps to follow.

First, click + Add Computers to specify the controlled physical machine as the source machine, click OK to confirm.

4. Click Step 2 to specify the source disk you want to backup.

In addition, click on the inverted triangle sign ﹀ you can select to backup All disks, Disks containing system partitions, Disks containing partitions with specified drive letters, or Disks containing partitions with matching labels.

5. Then specify a Share or NAS device to store the backup, and then you can click Start Backup.

6. The created task will be listed separately in Tasks. Click Advanced > Restore on the right top of the task, and select to Restore to another computer. Specify the destination virtual machine and click Next to continue.

7. You can Edit Disk, or Align partition to optimize for SSD in this step. Then you can click Start Restore to complete the P2V migration.

Summary

After announcing the removal of VMware vCenter Converter Standalone from the product download list, VMware has been working on the new version as promised. In this article I briefly introduced VMware vCenter Converter Standalone and its new version beta program.

Until now it is still unclear when the new version of VMware vCenter Converter Standalone will be released. If you need to perform V2V migration or P2V VMware before that, you can try AOMEI Centralized Backupper that allows you to backup and restore virtual machines as physical machines.