Convert most “OVA” virtual machines, to VHD or VHDX with Powershell, for use with Hyper-V.

Hey everyone! Just thought I’d post up a quick set of instructions to take a VMware formatted OVA file, extract out the .VMDK file and then convert it to a VHD or VHDX with Powershell.

First, you will need the Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter package, and installed it. You can download it here: title

Next, fire up powershell as administrator, and run this command to import the virtual machine converter powershell Cmdlets:

Import-Module "C:\Program Files\Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter\MvmcCmdlet.psd1"

Next, download the VMWare OVA you wish to convert. Use 7zip or WinRar to extract out the .VMDK file. Follow the below example for conversion with powershell:

 ConvertTo-MvmcVirtualHardDisk -SourceLiteralPath      C:\Users\Wylie\Desktop\Kali2_VHD\mrRobot-disk1.vmdk -VhdFormat vhd -DestinationLiteralPath C:\mrRobot.vhd

Finally put the .VHD where desired, and create a new virtual machine within Hyper-V. Select the pre-exsisting VHD file as the disk for the virtual machine. A lot of times, with some OVA’s and older linux appliance builds i have had to remove the Hyper-V default NIC, and add Legacy NIC in it’s place for proper hardware recognition.
Now there is no reason to have Hyper-V, VMPlayer, VirtualBox, and VMWare Workstation (or a combination of any). We only need Hyper-V, natively on Windows 10 Pro, or server 2012+.
Cheers everyone!