What is Virtual to Virtual v2v Migration?

Virtualization helps organizations cut administrative overhead, improve efficiency and security, and reduce downtime. But the platform a workload runs on today isn’t necessarily the one it should run on tomorrow. Sooner or later, most teams need to move virtual machines from one virtual environment to another — and that’s exactly what virtual-to-virtual (V2V) migration is for.

This article explains what V2V migration is, why it’s back at the top of the agenda in 2026, how it actually works, the tools involved, and what to plan for so a migration stays a migration and not an incident.

What is virtual-to-virtual (V2V) migration?

V2V migration is the process of transferring a virtual machine — its operating system, applications, and data — from one virtual environment to another. That can mean moving between different platforms (for example, from VMware vSphere to KVM or Proxmox VE), or between instances of the same platform (VMware to VMware).

The key point is that a VM isn’t just a file you copy. It carries a virtual disk in a specific format, virtual hardware, drivers, and boot configuration that are tied to its original hypervisor. A successful V2V migration doesn’t only move the data — it adapts the VM so it boots and runs correctly on the destination.

A quick clarification: V2V migration is often mentioned in the same breath as backup, but they’re not the same thing. Backup exists to protect and recover data; migration exists to relocate a workload. They do overlap in one useful way, though — a backup-and-restore workflow across two different hypervisors can serve as a practical migration path. We’ll come back to that.

Why V2V migration matters in 2026

For years, V2V was a routine, occasional task. That changed after Broadcom completed its acquisition of VMware in late 2023 and overhauled licensing — moving to subscription bundles, retiring perpetual licenses, and pushing renewal costs sharply upward. Industry reports of price increases ranging from several hundred to over a thousand percent turned “should we renew?” into a genuine strategic question for a large part of the market.

It’s worth being precise about what actually happened, because the headlines oversell it. This hasn’t been a clean, overnight “exodus.” Recent industry surveys point to the vast majority of VMware customers actively reducing their VMware footprint, while only a small share have fully migrated off it. The realistic picture for 2026 is diversification, not abandonment: many organizations now run more than one hypervisor on purpose — keeping VMware where it makes sense, and moving suitable workloads to alternatives like Proxmox VE, Nutanix AHV, OpenStack/KVM, or Hyper-V.

That multi-hypervisor reality is precisely why V2V migration skills and tooling matter more now than they did in 2024. Moving workloads between platforms — cleanly, repeatably, and without vendor lock-in on either end — has become a core infrastructure capability rather than a one-off project.

How V2V migration works

At a technical level, a V2V migration typically involves:

Copying the VM’s data — the virtual disks, plus configuration and metadata (CPU/RAM, disk layout, network settings).
Converting the disk format — for example, VMware’s VMDK to KVM’s qcow2 or raw. Different hypervisors expect different formats.
Adapting the guest — injecting the destination platform’s drivers (for example, VirtIO drivers for KVM-based targets), removing or replacing guest tools, and fixing boot configuration so the VM starts on new virtual hardware.
Cutting over — booting the migrated VM on the destination and validating that applications, services, and networking work as expected.

Steps 2 and 3 are where migrations succeed or fail. Moving the bytes is easy; making the guest boot and behave on a different hypervisor is the real work.

Common tools and approaches

virt-v2v — the de facto open-source tool for converting VMs from VMware (and other hypervisors) to KVM/libvirt and OpenStack. It can pull a VM directly from vCenter/ESXi over the API, or work from an exported OVA/OVF, handling disk conversion and driver adaptation in one pass.
VMware vCenter Converter — VMware’s classic P2V/V2V tool, revived and updated (a 9.0 release landed in 2025). Still useful for moving into VMware, but note that downloads now require a Broadcom Support Portal account, and availability can depend on your entitlement.
Native import/export — most platforms can import OVA/OVF or their own export formats, which covers simpler same-family or standards-based moves.
Backup-and-restore-based migration — restore a VM’s backup onto a different hypervisor than the one it came from. Because a modern backup solution already understands multiple platforms and handles the format and driver differences on restore, this turns migration into an operation your team already knows how to run — with the backup itself acting as a built-in rollback point.

Cold vs. minimal-downtime migration

The old “hot vs. cold” framing is worth clarifying, because it’s easy to confuse live migration with cross-hypervisor migration.

Live migration (VMware vMotion, KVM live migration) moves a running VM between hosts — but generally within the same platform and cluster, using shared or replicated storage. It’s near-zero downtime, and it’s the right tool for load-balancing and host maintenance. What it is not is a way to move a VM from, say, ESXi to Proxmox — you can’t live-migrate across different hypervisors.

For cross-hypervisor V2V, you realistically choose between two approaches:

Cold (offline) migration. Power off the source VM, convert and move it, then boot it on the destination. This is the simplest and safest option for data consistency, because nothing is changing on disk while you migrate. It’s the natural choice for databases, mail servers, and anything where you need a clean, application-consistent state — the trade-off is a maintenance window.

Minimal-downtime (sync-based) migration. Replicate or sync the VM’s data while the source keeps running, then perform a short final sync and cut over. This shrinks the downtime window significantly, which matters for workloads you can’t take offline for long. It’s not truly “zero downtime” — there’s still a brief cutover — but it’s often the right balance for production systems.

The right choice depends on your tolerance for downtime and your consistency requirements, not on how “important” the workload is.

What to plan for

Most failed migrations fail for predictable reasons. Plan for these up front:

Drivers. VirtIO on the target, and removing source-specific tools (e.g., VMware Tools) so they don’t conflict.
Boot configuration. BIOS vs. UEFI mismatches and bootloader changes are a frequent cause of a converted VM that won’t start.
Networking. MAC/IP changes and virtual NIC differences often require reconfiguration after cutover.
Application consistency. Quiesce databases and stateful apps, or migrate them cold, so you don’t carry over a mid-write state.
Testing and rollback. Validate the migrated VM before decommissioning the source, and keep a clear way back. Backup-based migration gives you this by design.
Licensing. OS and application licensing can change when the underlying platform changes — check before you cut over, not after.

Reasons for V2V migration

Cost. Escaping a proprietary platform whose licensing no longer fits the budget — the dominant driver in the current market.
Cross-platform compatibility. Consolidating or standardizing across a mixed estate, or moving workloads to wherever they run best.
Avoiding lock-in. Keeping the freedom to move workloads between hypervisors as vendor terms change.
Platform-specific features. Switching to a hypervisor that offers the management, performance, or capabilities a workload needs.
Simplicity. Converting an existing VM is far faster than rebuilding an OS, hardware profile, and application stack from scratch.

How Storware helps

Storware Backup and Recovery is built for exactly the multi-hypervisor world V2V migration now lives in. Because it protects VMs across VMware, Proxmox VE, Nutanix AHV, OpenStack, Hyper-V, Oracle Linux VM, Scale Computing, VergeOS and more, it can also restore a workload onto a different platform than the one it was backed up from — turning cross-hypervisor migration into a controlled backup-and-restore operation, with the backup doubling as your rollback point.

That means you can plan a move off VMware — or between any two supported platforms — without a separate migration tool, a separate skillset, or a leap of faith at cutover.

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Conclusion

V2V migration is the process of moving a virtual machine — OS, applications, and data — from one hypervisor to another, adapting it so it runs correctly on the destination. In 2026 it’s no longer an occasional chore but a core capability, driven by the shift toward multi-hypervisor infrastructure. The mechanics are well understood: convert the disks, adapt the guest, choose cold or minimal-downtime based on your consistency and downtime needs, and plan for drivers, boot, networking, and rollback. Do that — ideally with a tool that already speaks every platform in your estate — and a cross-platform move becomes routine rather than risky.