Migration of Xen Virtual Machine to VMware VM

[satheeshsatz]

Hi All,  Happy New year!

We are planning to migrate all the Citrix Xen VM to Vmware VM due to license issues(we are not planning to buy Xenserver License).

what are the steps need to be followed?

so far i have understood as below.

1. Install vCenter standard converter on source VM(Xen  VM).

2. use V2V migration, and update the destination.

3. Power on the Destination VM once it is completed.

is there anything else i have to follow?

We have many servers includes Linux VMs, what is the best options to perform the same?

[RickVerstegen]

Before you start have a look at this video:
How to migrate from Citrix XEN Server to vMWare Vsphere ESXi - YouTube

It will help you prepare the migration.

Other tips and considerations from my experience:
1. Clean-up source machine. This includes basic activities, such as emptying the trash can and removing unnecessary software/data. It is also considered a best practice to defrag the source volumes prior to migration.

2. Disable-Anti virus on the source virtual machine when doing an online conversion.

3. Remove all snapshots on the source virtual machine (Xen)

4. Inventory all source virtual machines with necessary information, like IP settings, hostnames, which applications run on top of it, classifications and impact.

5. If MAC address needs to be the same on the destination virtual machine, make note of the MAC address of the source virtual machine (Xen)

6. Do not change any resources on the virtual machine like, resizing disks, resizing memory, unless you have to This can be done after the migration is completed successfully. Keep it simple.

7. Create timeslots of virtual machines so you know how long it takes to convert these virtual machines and how many virtual machines you can do in a time slot.
7. Group virtual machines together in your timeslot with dependencies.

8. Start with test virtual machines/less critical virtual machines to verify the process and any issues you are facing during conversion can be noted and solved before starting with production virtual machines.

Also check below article for best practices and troubleshooting:

VMware Knowledge Base

[Zimeon]

Wrote this a while back, had to migrate XEN VM's to VMware and this was one option that worked well for us. It does require upgrading or creating a migration host with a new enough XCP-NG for the e1000 adapter.

https://www.null-byte.org/vmware/migrating-xen-xcp-ng-virtual-machine-to-vmware-esxi/

[OllerabS]

1.

the only supported way to uninstall xen tools on the source vm in citrix hypervisor is here:

How to Remove XenTools for Clean Install

2.

the only way to overcome the extremly poor performance is to take an image with some kind of image software

and to attach a second large disk on the source VM

i use the bare system recovery software for windows of my backup solution

it takes for me about 20 minutes to write the image of the system disk of a windows server 2012 r2 server to the temporarely attached image data disk

3.

attach the image data disk with the image file to another windows VM with installed xen tools and copy it to a VMware windows VM with the image data disk as a windows network share

if the image data disk server VM and the target VM runs on the same ESXi host it is very fast to restore the image

4.

boot with the image software winpe client and restore the image on the empty target VM in VMware with disks and CD rom all IDE and not SCSI

5.

after installation of the VMware tools you can change the disk type from IDE back to SCSI