Move vSphere VMs to Azure Stack HCI

Daniel Puls 26 Reputation points
2021-01-27T20:00:20.587+00:00

Hello Community,

I´m looking for the best way to move 20 VMware vSphere machines (20 OVA Files existing from export) to Azure Stack HCI. Does anyone have the perfect solution or an idea?
I can´t find any way or documentation on MS docs.

Thank you.
Daniel

Azure Stack HCI
Azure Stack HCI
A hyperconverged infrastructure operating system delivered as an Azure service that provides security, performance, and feature updates.
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  1. MattMcSpirit-MSFT 561 Reputation points
    2021-01-27T21:02:01.047+00:00

    Hi Daniel,

    Do you only have the exported OVA's, or do you have the vSphere environment and the running VMs too? Most of the migration tools convert the VM from ESXi/vCenter and not the OVA on a file system.

    If you do only have the OVA, you could use something like 7zip or WinRar to extract the VMDK(s), and then use a tool like https://cloudbase.it/qemu-img-windows/ to convert it to a VHD/x, or StarWind V2V Converter You'd then create the AzSHCI VM, and attach the VHD/x files.

    Hope that helps!
    Matt

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  1. Daniel Puls 26 Reputation points
    2021-01-27T22:19:59.537+00:00

    Hello Matt,

    thanks for your answer.
    The plan is that I will make 3 Azure Stack HCI hosts out of the 3 existing ESXi hypervisors (vSphere on top), managed from windows admin center.
    So i will have no other choice than an ova export.
    I will look at qemu as a tool, i have less positive experiences with StarWind.

    Daniel

  2. MattMcSpirit-MSFT 561 Reputation points
    2021-01-27T22:32:59.067+00:00

    Hi - great, thanks for the update - another option would be to keep 1 ESXi node and 2 HCI cluster nodes, and migrate with tools like SCVMM 2019 (update to manage Azure Stack HCI 20H2 is coming soon), and then re-image the ESXi node, deploy AzSHCI and join it to the cluster.

    I suspect the QEMU option may be a little easier. Acronis Cloud Migration is another, and they used to have a free version, but it seems like it's been removed from the website.

    Thanks!
    Matt

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