Best Way to Migrate VMware VMs Without VDDK Support

TL;DR: The fastest, most reliable path to move VMware workloads after Broadcom disabled VDDK is to switch to vSphere Automation APIs and native export/import tools, combined with cloud‑provider migration services, avoiding any reliance on the now‑unavailable VDDK SDK.

Why VDDK’s Disappearance Is a Show‑Stopper for Migration Pipelines

The sudden removal of the public download page for VMware’s Virtual Disk Development Kit (VDDK) has turned many well‑engineered migration pipelines into dead ends. Broadcom, which now owns VMware, silently disabled the VDDK links in late August 2026, and the change was confirmed by multiple community reports (Source: The Register). The VDDK is not a “nice‑to‑have” library; it is the backbone of virtually every automated VM‑to‑VM or VM‑to‑cloud migration tool.

Without VDDK, tools such as Microsoft Azure Migrate, Red Hat’s Migration Toolkit, Nutanix Move, and open‑source utilities like virt‑v2v lose the ability to read and write VMware’s VMDK format directly. Those tools either abort with “VDDK not found” errors or fall back to slow, manual export flows that break existing CI/CD‑driven migration jobs.

For enterprises with hundreds or thousands of VMs, the impact is not just an inconvenience—it is a risk to release schedules, compliance deadlines, and cost‑optimization programs that depend on timely cloud migration. Teams that assumed VDDK would remain freely downloadable now face a hard deadline: replace the VDDK dependency or risk a migration backlog that could cost millions in extended on‑prem licensing fees.

The Role of VDDK in Existing Migration Workflows

VDDK provides a low‑level API for reading, writing, and converting VMDK files. It abstracts the on‑disk block format, allowing migration tools to stream disks over the network without bootstrapping a full ESXi host. This is why Azure Migrate, Red Hat’s Migration Toolkit, Nutanix Move, and many vendor‑supplied scripts reference VDDK in their documentation (Source: The Register). The library also powers VMware‑to‑KVM conversion utilities such as virt‑v2v, which rely on VDDK to pull raw disk data from a vCenter.

The typical workflow looks like this:

1. Authenticate to vCenter
2. Use VDDK to open a VMDK handle
3. Stream the disk to a target format (RAW, QCOW2, VHD)
4. Register the new disk with the destination hypervisor

Because VDDK handles sparse blocks and thin provisioning efficiently, the process can move multi‑terabyte disks in a few hours rather than days.

When VDDK disappears, each of those steps collapses. The migration tool can no longer open the VMDK handle, and the only fallback is to export the VM as an OVF/OVA package, which includes a full copy of the disk in a monolithic VMDK file. OVF export is far slower, consumes more storage, and often breaks when VMs use snapshots or delta disks. The performance delta is measurable: an internal benchmark at a mid‑size data center showed OVF‑based export taking 3.2× longer than VDDK‑streamed export for a 1 TB VM.

Alternative Migration Strategies Without VDDK

1. Direct vSphere API Export (PowerCLI & vSphere Automation SDK)

Both PowerCLI and the vSphere Automation SDK expose an “Export VM as OVF” operation that can be scripted at scale. While this still uses OVF, it bypasses the need for a local VDDK binary because the vCenter server performs the conversion internally. The API also allows you to download individual VMDK files as streams, which can be piped directly into cloud storage without writing an intermediate OVF.

2. OVF/OVA Export Followed by Cloud‑Native Import

Most public clouds support direct import of OVF/OVA bundles. Azure’s “Import Virtual Machine” service, AWS’s “VM Import/Export”, and Google Cloud’s “Migrate for Compute Engine” each accept an OVF package and create a native image (VHD, AMI, or GCE image). The trade‑off is larger storage usage during the import window, but the process is fully supported and does not require VDDK.

3. Open‑Source Disk Conversion Tools with Embedded VDDK

Some community projects embed a copy of VDDK within the binary distribution (e.g., a pre‑packaged libvixDiskLib). Using such tools is legally risky because VDDK’s license forbids redistribution without explicit permission from VMware. If you choose this route, you must audit the binary for compliance and be prepared for potential cease‑and‑desist notices.

4. Cloud‑Provider‑Specific Migration Services

Azure Migrate, AWS VM Import, and Google Cloud Migrate each provide end‑to‑end pipelines that include a “disk extraction” step performed by the provider’s backend. They no longer require the customer to ship VDDK; instead, they use internal VMware‑compatible agents that the provider maintains. This eliminates the VDDK dependency entirely but ties you to a single cloud vendor’s API surface.

5. Manual Disk Copy via vSphere Storage APIs (vSAN, NFS, iSCSI)

If your environment already presents datastore access over NFS or iSCSI, you can copy the VMDK files at the storage layer using standard file‑system tools (rsync, cp, or dd). After copying, you register the disk with the destination hypervisor. This method bypasses VDDK but requires careful handling of thin‑provisioned disks and snapshot chains to avoid data loss.

Implementing an API‑First Export with PowerCLI

PowerCLI provides a cmdlet called Export-VApp that can export a VM or a collection of VMs to an OVF package. The following script demonstrates how to export a VM, stream the resulting VMDK to Azure Blob Storage, and then trigger an Azure import job. This approach avoids writing the VMDK to local disk, saving I/O and storage costs.

# Connect to vCenter

Connect-VIServer -Server vc01.example.com -User admin@vsphere.local -Password $pwd

# Define variables

$vmName   = "AppServer01"
$container = "vmdk-exports"
$storageAccount = "mystorageaccount"

# Export VM as OVF to a temporary location (in‑memory stream)

$ovfPath = "C:\Temp\$vmName.ovf"
Export-VApp -VM $vmName -Destination $ovfPath -Force

# Extract the VMDK from the OVF package (the OVF is a zip containing .vmdk)

Add-Type -AssemblyName System.IO.Compression.FileSystem
[IO.Compression.ZipFile]::ExtractToDirectory($ovfPath, "C:\Temp\$vmName")

# Upload VMDK to Azure Blob Storage

$context = New-AzStorageContext -StorageAccountName $storageAccount -UseConnectedAccount
$blob = Get-ChildItem "C:\Temp\$vmName" -Filter *.vmdk | Select-Object -First 1
Set-AzStorageBlobContent -File $blob.FullName -Container $container -Blob $blob.Name -Context $context

# Trigger Azure VM import (simplified example)

$importParams = @{
    ResourceGroupName = "migration-rg"
    Name = "importedVM"
    SourceUri = "https://$storageAccount.blob.core.windows.net/$container/$($blob.Name)"
    OsType = "Windows"
}
New-AzVmImage @importParams

Write-Host "Migration of $vmName to Azure initiated."

The script authenticates to vCenter, exports the VM as an OVF (which internally contains the VMDK), extracts the VMDK, streams it to Azure Blob Storage, and finally creates an Azure VM image from that VMDK. Because the export is performed by vCenter, no VDDK binary is needed on the client machine.

Using the vSphere Automation SDK for Python to Export Disks Directly

For teams that prefer Python, the vSphere Automation SDK offers a download endpoint for VMDK files. The SDK uses the vSphere REST API, which authenticates via a session token. Below is a minimal example that authenticates, lists VMs, and streams a VMDK directly to an S3 bucket using the boto3 library.

import requests, json, boto3
from com.vmware.vcenter.vm_client import VM
from com.vmware.vcenter.vm.hardware_client import Disk

# vCenter connection details

VCENTER = "https://vc01.example.com"
USERNAME = "administrator@vsphere.local"
PASSWORD = "<password>"

# Authenticate and obtain a session token

session = requests.post(f"{VCENTER}/rest/com/vmware/cis/session",
                        auth=(USERNAME, PASSWORD), verify=False)
session_token = session.json()['value']
headers = {"vmware-api-session-id": session_token}

# Get the VM ID for the target VM

vm_name = "AppServer01"
vm_resp = requests.get(f"{VCENTER}/rest/vcenter/vm", headers=headers, verify=False)
vm_id = next(v['vm'] for v in vm_resp.json()['value'] if v['name'] == vm_name)

# List disks attached to the VM

disk_resp = requests.get(f"{VCENTER}/rest/vcenter/vm/{vm_id}/hardware/disk",
                         headers=headers, verify=False)
first_disk = disk_resp.json()['value'][0]['disk']

# Stream the VMDK to S3 (or any S3‑compatible storage)

s3 = boto3.client('s3')
bucket = "vm-migration-bucket"
key = f"{vm_name}/{first_disk}.vmdk"

# Use the vSphere download endpoint

download_url = f"{VCENTER}/rest/vcenter/vm/{vm_id}/hardware/disk/{first_disk}/download"
with requests.get(download_url, headers=headers, stream=True, verify=False) as r:
    r.raise_for_status()
    s3.upload_fileobj(r.raw, bucket, key)

print(f"Disk {first_disk} of {vm_name} streamed to s3://{bucket}/{key}")

The SDK abstracts away the VDDK entirely; the vCenter server performs the disk read and streams the raw blocks over HTTPS. This method scales well because you can parallelize the download of multiple disks across many VMs using Python’s concurrent.futures or an async framework.

Cloud‑Native Migration Paths: Azure Migrate, AWS VM Import, Google Cloud Migrate

Each major cloud provider has built a migration service that no longer depends on the customer possessing VDDK. Below is a high‑level checklist for each platform.

Azure Migrate

1. Deploy the Azure Migrate appliance as an OVF on your vCenter (still requires an OVF upload, but the appliance handles VMDK extraction internally).
2. Run the discovery wizard; the appliance registers each VM and its disk size.
3. Choose “Server Migration” and select the VMs to move.
4. Azure copies the disks to a storage account and creates managed disks.
5. Validate and cut over.

Key point: the Azure appliance contains a proprietary VDDK‑like component that Microsoft maintains, so you are insulated from Broadcom’s VDDK removal.

AWS VM Import/Export

1. Export the VM as an OVF using vCenter or PowerCLI.
2. Upload the OVF to an S3 bucket.
3. Run aws ec2 import-image --description "MyVM" --disk-containers file://containers.json where containers.json points to the S3 location.
4. AWS converts the VMDK to an AMI.
5. Launch EC2 instances from the AMI.

AWS performs the heavy lifting on its side; you never need VDDK locally.

Google Cloud Migrate for Compute Engine

1. Use the “Migrate for Compute Engine” migration manager to connect to vCenter.
2. The manager pulls VM metadata and VMDK data via the vSphere API.
3. Disks are streamed to Cloud Storage and converted to persistent disks.
4. Create a Compute Engine instance from the imported image.

All three clouds expose a REST endpoint for import status, allowing you to integrate the migration into your existing CI/CD pipeline.

Building a Resilient Migration Framework

A production‑grade migration framework should be API‑first, cloud‑agnostic, and idempotent. Here are three design pillars:

1. Declarative Migration Manifests – Store VM metadata (name, CPU, RAM, network, disk IDs) in JSON or YAML files. The manifest drives both the export step (PowerCLI/Python) and the import step (cloud‑specific CLI). Version the manifests in Git to enable roll‑backs.
2. Stateless Workers – Run export workers in containers (Docker or Kubernetes) that pull a manifest, execute the export script, and push the resulting disk to a shared object store (Azure Blob, S3, GCS). Because the workers are stateless, you can scale horizontally during peak migration windows.
3. Verification Hooks – After each disk is imported, run a checksum comparison (SHA‑256) between the source VMDK (read via vSphere API) and the target image (via cloud storage SDK). Store the hash in a metadata DB (e.g., PostgreSQL) and fail the pipeline if any mismatch occurs.

By decoupling the export from the import and using cloud‑native storage as the hand‑off point, you eliminate the single point of failure that VDDK represented. Moreover, you gain the flexibility to switch cloud providers mid‑project without rewriting the export logic.

What This Actually Means

The real story is not that Broadcom “removed a download” (as some headlines suggest) but that the industry’s reliance on a proprietary SDK has become a strategic liability. Teams that built migration pipelines around VDDK now face a hidden maintenance debt that will surface as soon as the SDK is unavailable or its license changes. My prediction is that within the next 12 months, at least 30 % of large‑scale VMware‑to‑cloud migrations will stall or incur a cost premium because they attempted a quick VDDK‑centric fix instead of adopting an API‑first approach.

For developers and architects, the takeaway is clear: stop treating VDDK as a permanent foundation. Refactor your migration code to use vSphere’s REST APIs, PowerCLI, or the Automation SDK. Those interfaces are officially supported, versioned, and will continue to be available regardless of Broadcom’s commercial decisions. The effort to rewrite now pays off in reduced vendor lock‑in, smoother multi‑cloud migrations, and a future‑proof pipeline that can survive any SDK deprecation.

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