There is a lot of ink already on the subject of converting Microsoft Virtual Machines to VMWare Virtual Machines, but I’m writing down what worked for me to get it up and running.
VMWare vCenter Converter
Download it and install it. If you’re not carrying multiple machines then install it on your Windows 8 (that’s running your Hyper-V machines). I’m doing that, because a different machine adds quite some hassle when trying to connect.
Run as Administrator
Configure the Converter client to Run As Administrator.
Connect to IP address
When connecting to the Hyper-V server, you might want to use the IP address of the machine (eg. 127.0.0.1) to avoid some hassle with SMB restrictions. I’m sure you could as well solve those, but IP works fine as well.
Unable to obtain hardware information for the selected machine
If you get this, and believe me you will, first make sure the selected machine is powered off. But even then you’ll likely run into this. The fix is pretty nasty:
Grant “Everyone” Modify permissions on the folder containing the VM disks (.vhd).
Another thing to verify is that your Virtual Machine hard disk is not using the newer VHDX format introduced in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012. This will also result in the above error.
You'll need to edit and convert your disk to the VHD format. If you have snapshots and want to keep them, you can export the snapshot and import it again as single VHDX file, which can then be converted...
UNC path
When you get to this screen, make sure the path to store the converted machine on is a UNC path.
Easiest here is to create a temporary folder and grant the specified account Write permissions.
Finally
When you pass all these hurdles you’ll get to a few more configuration screens like the one below, but really nothing will stop you now from converting that machine, let alone insufficient disk space ;)
So why am I converting you ask ? No, I’ve not yet given up on Hyper-V. Sure it has less features but so far I haven’t really missed any of them. I can get around using Remote Desktop and Internet Connection Sharing just fine. I’m only creating these VMWare images for some of my colleagues that run VMWare (either they can’t be convinced or don’t have the right CPU to run Hyper-V 3.0 on Windows 8).
Reference
Another really useful guide on this is the following blog post: Converting Hyper-V to VMWare