With the release of Hyper-V in Windows Server 2008 and the recent release of Hyper-V Server 2008, people are starting to use Hyper-V for their test, development, and production environments. Creating virtual machines (VMs) with Hyper-V is very easy, and installing operating systems and applications in a virtual machine is as transparent as in the physical world. Many people, however, have existing VMs that were used with Virtual PC 2007 or Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1.

 

Fortunately, these older VMs can be used with Hyper-V as well. But before that can occur, you must perform certain manual steps. At the very least, you need to attach the virtual hard disk (.vhd) files to the hard disk drives in Hyper-V. This requires creating a VM using the Hyper-V wizard, opening up the settings for the newly created VM, and then configuring the drives (probably IDE) with the virtual hard disk files.

 

Within Hyper-V, you must uninstall the Virtual Machine Additions and install the Hyper-V Integration Services. When this is done, you have migrated the original VM to a Hyper-V VM.

 

But there are many other settings you may want from the original VM, such as those related to memory, CPU resource control, DVD image, floppy image, and SCSI controllers. Those settings are not stored in the VHD file but in the Virtual Machine Config (VMC) file.

 

If you want to include those settings in your new VM, you must open the VMC file in Notepad for reference and make the adjustments in Hyper-V accordingly—by hand. When you have several VMs, this process takes quite a bit of time.

 

The fact that Hyper-V lacks VMC import functionality drove me to develop a VMC to Hyper-V import tool. This tool imports the settings from a VMC file and displays all equivalent settings in its UI. From there, you can tweak the settings, update the virtual drive image paths, choose whether to create synthetic or legacy network adapters, and more. Once you are done, you can create the Hyper-V VM from the original VMC configuration with one click.

So what is the VMC to Hyper-V Import Tool, VMC2HV for short, and for what was it intended? As noted, VMC2HV imports the configuration from a VMC file so that you don't have to configure each Hyper-V VM manually. Both Virtual PC and Virtual Server use VMC files to store the hardware and other properties of a VM. VMC2HV reads the VMC file and maps all relevant properties to those for a Hyper-V VM. For those properties that did not exist in earlier VMs, VMC2HV provides additional options. Those properties that no longer exist are ignored.

So what does VMC2HV have to offer? The following is a summary of the tool's capabilities:

• Import of both Virtual Server 2005 and Virtual PC 2007 VMC files
• Creation of a VM on local Hyper-V host
• Creation of a VM on remote Hyper-V host
• Validation of virtual disk and ISO files in local scenario
• Editing of virtual drive image paths (vhd, vfd, iso)
• Swapping of the first SCSI disk with the first IDE disk
• Specifying of static MAC addresses
• Specification of either legacy (emulated) or enhanced network adapter
• Specifying of the number of virtual processors and resource controls
• Specification of management settings
• Specification of COM ports
• Specification of device boot order
• Specification of alternate virtual machine path
• Built-in help in a CHM file
• Support for both x86 and x64 Windows Vista and Windows Server 2008