SUMMARY
Backup Failure when Virtual Machine's Disks are converted from VHD to VMDK using 3rd Party Tool
ISSUE
Purpose
Address virtual machine backup failure when the VMs' Disks are converted from VHD/VNDx (Hyper-V) to VMDK (VMware) using a 3rd Party Tool.
Description
When converting Virtual Disks from VHD/VHDx (Hyper-V) to VMDK (VMware) using a 3rd Party Tool like WinImage, StarWind Free Converter, etc., if you select the converted disk to be of type similar to Thin Provisioned Disk (also referred sometimes by the 3rd Party Tool as ‘Sparse Disk’), a Backup error occurs.
This type of disk is actually an old type. It was created by VMware for a product VMware Server, which was deprecated in 2010.
Cause
This deprecated format is not traditionally supported by VMware on ESX Servers and hence, is not something that is backed up using the VDDK APIs.
Resolution
There are 2 solutions possible –
- If the original VHD is still present, convert the disk again using the 3rd Party Tool and while converting, but convert it to a Thick Provisioned Type.
- If the original VHD is not present, do a Storage vMotion of the existing VMDKs and while doing that, select 'Thick Provisioned' as the destination type.
All the required steps for both the solutions are outlined in the attachments