What to Expect When Migrating from VMWare to Hyper-V?

If you're looking to minimize downtime during migration, Veeam Instant Recovery is a great option if your backups are close to your environment. For remote file servers, where bandwidth is tight, you might consider setting up new servers and syncing data using robocopy. Just keep in mind, if you use tools like Starwind V2V Converter, manually halting the VM at the right moment for a delta snapshot can be tricky and might lead to data loss if not done carefully.

Migrating was pretty straightforward for our remote sites; we used tools like disk2vhd and Starwind successfully. However, our main datacenter required more effort because setting up clusters on Hyper-V involves managing multiple roles. Don’t forget to configure MPIO for storage and set up your networking properly. Testing first with a multi-node cluster is highly recommended so you can document your setup for production use. Also, remember to use PowerShell to optimize your setup since production hosts should ideally be core.

Here are a few things we found during our migration process from VMWare to Hyper-V:

1. Checkpoints don’t save RAM state, so we create a saved state, apply a checkpoint, and then power it back on, which makes the VM unavailable momentarily.
2. There’s no visual control for VM startup sequences like in VMWare. We use a PowerShell script to manage start orders instead.
3. Hyper-V lacks a built-in task scheduler, so we set up PowerShell scripts to ensure our VDIs are always running.

For migration, we exported VM vdmk files and used Starwind for conversion—worked well overall. Just watch for Linux compatibility post-migration; some versions might not work properly.

Though I haven’t switched from VMWare, I can share some insights on using Hyper-V. For instance, Hyper-V's replication isn't as seamless as VMWare’s—you have to manually expand drives on replicas after changing them on the primary, which can be a hassle. So just keep that in mind as you plan your migration.

When migrating to Hyper-V from VMWare, it's crucial to adapt to the differences in networking configurations since Hyper-V is built on Windows and doesn't have the same intuitive management. For example, to configure multiple block storage connections, you need to enable the MPIO feature. Also, remember that clustering in Windows is managed differently—it's not just about VMs. Also, consider using tools like SCVMM for management, though it can be a bit overwhelming. Don't rely solely on Hyper-V Manager for setting up networks; research Switch Embedded Teaming (SET) extensively to avoid frustration. And generally, avoid creating Gen1 VMs unless absolutely necessary, as Gen2 is more standard.