site appliance, need hyperv VHD file, not vmware .ova file

[asdffdsa6131]

hello,
where is the .vhd file, for the site appliance.
veeampn 1.x did not offer a .vhd file, which never made any sense.
given that veeampn runs just fine in azure, why cannot you offer a vhd???

i was hoping that veeam 2.x would have a site appliance that would be in vhd format.

plesae advise?

thanks

[IGolovenko]

Hello.

Currently Veeam PN appliance is not available in Hyper-V format, but you can try to convert OVF/OVA into VHD using free V2V converter from StarWind: https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-v2v-converter

[asdffdsa6131]

so when will veeam upload a vhd file, instead of the ova?

[nielsengelen]

There are no plans for a VHD file. As mentioned, you can convert the solution with StarWind V2V converter which is the most popular one.

[asdffdsa6131]

i do not understand your logic but I thank you for your help in this and other posts.

[alesovodvojce]

No advice from here was working for me, as Veeam's OVA file is full VM packed in one file, but the converters need the actual VM harddisk file on input only.
That is no go for Starwinds and other converters.

To use Veeam PN on Hyper-V platform, you need to perform these steps:

1. download Oracle VirtualBox and install its core (so without networking, without usb support etc as you will need only its libraries for conversion)
2. import the OVA file (this should unwrap the OVA to VDI file. Remember which directory it was imported to. There will be also the VDI file that you are hunting for!)
3. go to its folder, which should be c:\Program Files\Oracle\VirtualBox
4. run VBoxManage.exe clonehd --format vhd [sourceVDIfilePath] [targetVHDfilePath]
5. create new Hyper-v Guest (Generation 1, 1GB RAM, 2vCPUs, Legacy Network adapter) and connect that VHD to it on IDE controller
6. done. Btw console login to that VM is root/VeeamPN (username/password)

[alesovodvojce]

to get networking ready, here is what I did (linux pro will do it better for sure:)

nano /etc/netplan/01-netcfg.yaml

add these lines to the end

[yourNetworkAdapterName]:
dhcp4: yes

So I have
enp0s10f0:
dhcp4: yes

issue command

netplan apply

Done. in ifconfig you should see ip address assigned and you can ping outside the world.

Other things I did - probably wont have effect to getting network working. So rather for evidence.
A label "enp0s10f0" is my network interface (don't know why this weird name) so change it for yours, probably "eth0"

# list all network interfaces
ifconfig -a

nano /etc/network/interfaces
# added lines to the end
auto enp0s10f0
iface enp0s10f0 inet dhcp

# list network hardware
lshw -C network

# turn the network adapter on (was DISABLED)
ifconfig enp0s10f0 up

# list hyperv modules in kernel
lsmod | grep hv

# hv_netvsc was missing among other Hyper-V support things, so I have added them using
nano /etc/initramfs-tools/modules

# added lines to the end
hv_vmbus
hv_netvsc

update-initramfs -u

[asdffdsa6131]

thanks for veeampn, but really this is insane, not to have a ready to go hyper-v files.

i have not been able to convert the ova to hyper-v and i see that others have the same problem.

at work we use hyper-v, know nothing about vmware.
at work, we use microsoft windows, no nothing about linux, ubunutu and so on.

when will veeam releae a ready to go, veeampn for hyper-v???

thanks much,
david

[nielsengelen]

There are currently no plans to release this as mentioned before. The easiest way, for now, is to install a Linux machine and leverage the installation guide.

[alesovodvojce]

No advice from here was working for me, as Veeam's OVA file is full VM packed in one file, but the converters need the actual VM harddisk file on input only.
That is no go for Starwinds and other converters.

To use Veeam PN on Hyper-V platform, you need to perform these steps:

1. download Oracle VirtualBox and install its core (so without networking, without usb support etc as you will need only its libraries for conversion)
2. .....

This way finally does not work either. The problem is that after VMware->HyperV conversion, VeeamPN refuses to launch one of its linux services.

I have recieved some needed (and free) effort from Veeam's Ilia Korsakov. His comment

I've been testing this for a while and noticed that changing /etc/netplan/01-netcfg.yaml rules prior to migrating this virtual machine to the Hyper-V environment (which you find as a possible solution as well):

network:
version: 2
renderer: networkd
ethernets:
enp0s3:
dhcp4: yes

network:
version: 2
renderer: networkd
ethernets:
eth0:
dhcp4: yes

but it of course still requires some Linux knowledge.

But, in order to do this, you will need to install VMware player (free). And after going through instructions above, then then continue with my checklist.
I have not tried the whole path. More effective way is to install Linux VM from image (our was "Ubuntu 18.04LTS mini") and then do command-line VeeamPN install.

That two steps took far less time than all conversions/fixes would.

[IGolovenko]

OVA file in reality is just a plain TAR archive containing all the OVF files, including VM's hard disk file. You can change extension of OVA file and then use any archiver to extract the hard disk file.