What’s new in Conversion Manager
Important:
Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 Cumulative Update 1 becomes End of Life on June 25, 2025. Plan your upgrade to XenServer 8.4 now to ensure a smooth transition and continued support. For more information, see Upgrade.
If you are using your Citrix Virtual Apps and Desktops license files to license your Citrix Hypervisor 8.2 Cumulative Update 1 hosts, these license files are not compatible with XenServer 8.4. Before upgrading you must acquire XenServer Premium Edition socket license files to use with XenServer 8.4. These socket license files are available as an entitlement of the Citrix for Private Cloud, Citrix Universal Hybrid Multi-Cloud, Citrix Universal MSP, and Citrix Platform License subscriptions for running your Citrix workloads. Citrix customers who have not yet transitioned to these new subscriptions can request to participate in a no-cost promotion for 10,000 XenServer Premium Edition socket licenses. For more information, see XenServer.
If you do not get a compatible license for XenServer 8.4 before upgrading, when you upgrade your hosts they revert to the 90-day Trial Edition. Trial Edition provides the same features as Premium Edition with some limitations. For more information, see XenServer 8.4 Licensing Overview.
Download the latest version of the Conversion Manager virtual appliance from the Citrix Hypervisor downloads page.
If you already have a previous version of the Conversion Manager virtual appliance installed and want to upgrade to the latest version, there is no automatic upgrade path. Download the latest version of the virtual appliance and remove the older version from your system.
For more information on converting VMware ESXi/vCenter VMs, see Get started with Conversion Manager.
What’s new in 8.5.0
Released May 27, 2025
This release includes the following new features:
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VM template association: When converting a VM, you can associate it with a XenServer guest template. Using a template in the conversion ensures that the converted VMs have consistent configurations and behave more reliably.
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XenServer VM Tools configuration: As part of the conversion process, you can now configure whether the Windows drivers included in the XenServer VM Tools for Windows are automatically updated.
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Enhanced disk image import: Disk formats like VHD, VHDX, AVHDX, and VMDK are now better supported. The Conversion Manager automatically fixes up the operating system and installs the XenServer VM Tools after import.
To use these features, ensure that your XenCenter is updated to the latest version.
Earlier releases
This section summarizes features from previous releases and their resolved issues. These earlier versions are superseded by the latest release, and we recommend updating to the latest version of the Conversion Manager virtual appliance as soon as it becomes available.
Conversion Manager 8.4.0
Released Dec 5, 2024
This release includes the following new features:
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The Conversion Manager now automatically uninstalls VMware Tools from your VMs and provides the option to install XenServer VM Tools. While VMs can run without XenServer VM Tools, performance might be limited. XenServer VM Tools are installed automatically on Linux VMs, and for Windows VMs, you can configure the Conversion Manager to install them automatically.
Note:
Automatic installation of XenServer VM Tools is not supported for Windows 10 (32-bit) Enterprise edition. Install XenServer VM Tools for Windows manually. For more information, see Install XenServer VM Tools.
This release contains fixes for the following issues:
- Windows VMs converted from VMware to XenServer using the Conversion Manager are incorrectly detected as Linux VMs.
Conversion Manager 8.3.1
Released Feb 01, 2024
This release includes the following improvements:
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You can now batch convert multiple VMware ESXi/vCenter VMs in parallel at the same time.
Simply select the VMs you want to convert and the Conversion Manager performs the conversions in batches of 10 VMs at a time, automatically selecting the next set of 10 VMs in the queue once the job is complete.