There are some situations in which you might need to convert a physical machine into 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. If you have old physical machines or physical machines running specific applications, OSes, and configurations that require time for a fresh reinstallation, and service downtime for an extended period is not tolerated, conversion to a VM might solve the problem.

You may also be requested to import VMs created for different virtual platforms in vSphere, and to run those VMs in a VMware environment, but they must be converted into 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 https://www.vmware.com/products/converter.html) is the solution you should use to import a physical machine or VM into the vSphere environment.

You can perform two types of conversion:

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