HOW TO:  P2V, V2V for FREE - VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.5.1

HOW TO:  P2V, V2V for FREE - VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.5.1

If you need to complete a Physical to Virtual (P2V), Virtual to Virtual (V2V) conversion to a VMware product (VMware Workstation, Player or vSphere) for FREE, then there is some good news...

VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.5.1 was released on 17 April 2014, and this latest version has new support for the following:-
 

Also fixes numerous issues with crashing and conversion issues, when converting physical or virtual computers to VMware vSphere vCenter Server 5.5 and VMware Hypervisor ESXi 5.5.

While I would recommend and use VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.5.1, there are other commercial products that do exist, and I have used.

If you have a large estate of physical machines to migrate, these products have a scheduler and can perform automated workflows, but these are commercial products and not FREE like VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.5.1
 
If the operating system is Windows 2003, Windows 2000 or Windows NT 4.0, select and earlier version of VMware vCenter Converter Standalone version 3.0.3 or 4.0, support for early operating systems has been removed now from v5.5.

if you have recently upgraded to vSphere vCenter Server 5.5, and are looking for the Convert/Import vCenter plugin which existed with 4.x, it's now longer available, and has been removed, and you will need to use  VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.5 for your conversions.

and if you do use VMware vCenter Converter Standalone 5.5.1, and you want to make your transfers 60% faster checkout my EE article here
 
Hints and Tips can be found in my other EE Articles
 

VMware Product downloads here
 

If you have issues, you may want to consult the following articles and guides
 
Some Videos I've developed for Experts Exchange members to show the VMware vCenter Converter process.
 
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