Planning out migration from Vmware to Hyper V

[m0bov]

Hi all, just trying to plan out a migration here. We have two hosts, running Starwind vSAN on ESXi. We want to switch to Hyper V on the hosts due to the crippling VMware costs.

 

We use Redstor as a backup solution.

 

Its been suggested we use Redstor to restore each VM back to the newly provisioned Hyper V host. Once they are all back on the Hyper V host, we can then wipe and reload the other host.

 

My only concern is when it comes to Active Directory. The server needs to be running for the back, then we shut it down. Then we restore it to the other host but we need to make sure the other DCs are off. But if we power them up, the AD version will update? Or do we leave them running?

 

I did look at creating a snapshot, cos you can do that when the server is powered off. Then convert it to Hyper V image??? A snapshot might be better than a file level backup/restore? Any suggestions?

 

Thanks!

James

[Davit2005]

Joining the Hyper-V hosts to AD?

[3s-gtech]

Honestly, I would migrate the DCs. I've done ESXi to Hyper-V, and I converted the VMs with various tools (which worked really well, though I then had to convert them to v2 VMs). I didn't do this with DCs though - those I just built fresh on Hyper-V and then moved over the roles. There's too many things that can go wrong or complicate this.

[m0bov]

4 minutes ago, Davit2005 said:

Joining the Hyper-V hosts to AD?

No, the hosts would not be backed up, they are just purely a VM host.

[m0bov]

2 minutes ago, 3s-gtech said:

Honestly, I would migrate the DCs. I've done ESXi to Hyper-V, and I converted the VMs with various tools (which worked really well, though I then had to convert them to v2 VMs). I didn't do this with DCs though - those I just built fresh on Hyper-V and then moved over the roles. There's too many things that can go wrong or complicate this.

 

That's interesting, we do in fact, need to upgrade one of them anyway (still 2019), the others are 2022 but yes, we could do that!

[PotNoodleTech]

Yeh moved VMware to Hyper V about 10 years ago, miss Vmware but don't regret it for a second cost wise as even 10 years ago the costs for 3 hosts and Vsan were crippling.  I am amazed you are still running/paying for it now!

 

At the time i use Microsofts Virtual Machine migration tool (not sure if that's exacly what it was called).  Not sure if it exists now.

 

Your choice plenty of options for of hosts / san / nas / zfs / raid / etc.

[CHiLL]

We are planning on migrating from Vmware to Proxmox during the summer, which will include some downtime while the SAN LUNs are destroyed and recreated (because they are using VMFS at the moment), then I can convert the VMs from Vmware to Proxmox. During my research, it's strongly recommended to perform a full backup (not incremental/snapshot) of the server. My plan is to power them all off, perform full backups of the shutdown VMs, verify the backups, then perform the conversion. I'll start the conversion with the two DCs and once they are complete, I'll power the PDC on first, followed by the other DC. I can then work on the conversion of the other servers.

 

The most time consuming thing for me is going to be moving data around or restoring from backups. Due to storage constraints, I'm going to be limited to having to restore things like the staff shared drive (2TB) from a backup, which is going to take a long time. The least disruptive way to perform this will be to migrate the VM OS drives from the SAS LUN to the slower data/MDL LUN, so at least the servers are online for some time. Then destroy the SAS LUN, recreate it and start moving the server OS back. Once the servers are running, move data drives that will fit into the smaller SAS LUN, destroy the MDL LUN and recreate it, then move the data drives back, finally restoring data from backup if necessary.

 

I'm still planning it out at the moment, though if I can gain more downtime, then I believe Veeam can perform a conversion during a backup restore: veeam-hypervisor-migration-guide-vmware-proxmox-ve_wp.pdf.

[m0bov]

Looking at Starwinds conversion tool, it looks like a no brainer to me. I can shutdown all the VMs expect the vcentre. I can flatten the second host, Hyper V it, then do a conversion from VMware to Hyper V. First up the servers on the Hyper V host, check and if happy, flatten the first host with Hyper V. Then "balance" everything out.

 

The VMs are running file level backups from the Redstor client within the VM so I just let everything continue to run as normal. I will need Starwind to setup their VSan servers of course.

[KK20]

Ignore this. wrong post. cant seem to delete.