There are some situations where you might need to convert a physical machine to a VM or import a VM from a third party to take advantage of the scalability, reliability, security, and features provided by the vSphere platform, released from hardware constraints. If you have old physical machines or physical machines running specific applications, OS, and configurations that require time for a fresh reinstallation, and service downtime for a long period is not tolerated, conversion to a VM might solve the problem.

You may also be requested to import in vSphere VMs created for different virtual platforms, and to run those VMs in a VMware environment, they must be converted in a supported format.

To migrate the OS, applications, and data to the virtualization platform, the VMware vCenter Converter tool (available to download from the VMware website at the URL https://www.vmware.com/products/converter.html), is the solution you should use to import a physical or VM into the vSphere environment.

You can perform two types of conversion:

• Physical to virtual (P2V)
• Virtual to virtual (V2V)