Yes, with the caveats above. Test your first conversion on a non‑production source. Read the logs. And don’t expect any new features – but enjoy the fact that it still gets the job done after all these years.
Need to go from a raw disk image → ESXi → Workstation → even a cloud provider’s OVF? Converter handles the major formats: VMware (ESXi, Workstation, Fusion), Hyper‑V (VHD/VHDX), and OVF/OVA. I’ve used it to rescue VMs from a dead vSphere cluster and move them to a small Workstation Pro lab – seamless. vm ware converter
Here’s the elephant in the room: VMware hasn’t released a major update to Converter Standalone in years . The latest version (6.6.x as of writing) is maintained but feels like legacy software. VMware clearly wants you to use the conversion features built into vCenter (which require licensing) or third‑party tools for modern workloads. This means Converter Standalone doesn’t officially support the very latest ESXi hosts or the most recent Windows Server/Linux kernels out of the box – though many users report it still works with some manual tweaks. Yes, with the caveats above
“Unexpected error: 16008” or “Failed to reconfigure the destination VM” – these are common and you’ll spend time googling logs under %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\VMware\VMware vCenter Converter Standalone\logs . The root cause is often something simple (insufficient disk space on the target datastore, unsupported source disk sector size, or a stubborn antivirus on the source). But the error messages don’t guide you. And don’t expect any new features – but
For Windows, it’s nearly turn‑key. For Linux, you often need to prepare the source manually: reconfigure GRUB, ensure /boot is not on a weird LVM layout, and sometimes remove old hardware drivers. The automated Linux converter works for vanilla RHEL/CentOS/Ubuntu, but stray from that and prepare for troubleshooting.