back to article Microsoft waltzes users through Azure by killing VM conversion tool

Microsoft has announced “the upcoming retirement of Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter” (MVMC) and its replacement with Azure Recovery Services. MVMC does what it says on the can, namely convert virtual machines. The tool lets you turn physical machines into virtual machines, VMware hosts into Hyper-V hosts or convert VMs so …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. This post has been deleted by its author

  2. P. Lee

    Well we never saw that coming did we?

    No siree! Removing features once market share is high enough to drive lock-in?

    I wonder what it will be like when everything is in the cloud and there are no downloads ever?

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why to never trust Microsoft

    Reason #97.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Why to never trust Microsoft

      >> Why to never trust Microsoft.

      >> Reason #97.

      Reason #1. It's Microsoft.

      There fixed that for you :)

    2. Mark 85

      Re: Why to never trust Microsoft

      There's only 97 reasons? Or is this just #97 on the list that's infinitely long?

  4. jtaylor

    Yay for alternatives

    Great article. Microsoft has a bit of cheek.

    Fortunately, as noted, there are plenty of other tools to convert. On Unixy servers, I like qemu-img

    qemu-img convert WindowsX.vhdx -O WindowsX.qcow2

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Virtual PC 2007 - VHD....???

    Got some old VPC's with Win98 I'd like to keep, the files on the VHD especially...

    * Any suggestions for converting to other OS other than Windows?

    * Can they be converted and opened as a attached drive under Mint / Ubuntu etc?

    * Or can you run a Windows 98 VPC under Mint for example?

    Cheers for any insights... (No plans to use Win10, have doubts VPC 2007 would even install)

    1. Chika

      Re: Virtual PC 2007 - VHD....???

      Your first question I would consider to be one concerning host system, in which case any of the more recent Microsoft systems or Linux systems can do what you need. I personally run all my virtual systems off openSUSE but you'll find it just as easy to do with any of the more well known Linux distros including the two you mention.

      As the article says, VHDs can be picked up by Virtualbox with no trouble. If it's Win98 you want to keep around, I also keep a W98SE VB hanging around though more for curiosity these days. I originally had it for testing but I can't remember when I last needed to test anything with it.

      In theory you should be able to export a W98 drive to a partition which can be read by Linux. Unlike Windows, Linux can read quite a wide range of file systems, including NTFS and the various FAT file systems, unassisted though bear in mind that there are a few pitfalls (mostly speed related) with this mostly related to the way in which Linux is forced to do this when it comes to Microsoft proprietary formats.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Virtual PC 2007 - VHD....???

        Thanks Chika!

  6. yossarianuk

    KVM

    Whereas KVM can convert from/to pretty much any format you wish.

    Nice being in control.

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Windows

    Who knew?

    That other VM solutions beside Hyper-V existed?

  8. ecofeco Silver badge

    Microsoft=abandonment

    Once again and in addition to a very long history of this same action, Microsoft has shown it really is the company that abandons it customers.

    There is also no longer any doubt that Microsoft is herding everyone to the cloud and the subscription model.

    1. depicus
      Happy

      Re: Microsoft=abandonment

      Thankfully it's herding us to Linux servers :)

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why use it anyway?

    Surely if you are converting away from HyperV to another hypervisor you just use that hypervisors converter? If it was moving from Hyper-V to VMWare it wouldn't even occur to me to use the Microsoft tool, as I would use the VMWare one.

    Alternatively, just back the machine up and restore it into your preferred hypervisor.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like