Had a customer with Citrix XenServer 6 and a few Virtual Machines [VMs] running. The VMs were windows based and we wanted to move them to VMware Workstation 9. I found the easiest way to do this was:

1) Setup an intermediate Windows based share to put the “converted” VM onto. This can be on the VMware Workstation PC or another PC that can then move the files across to the VMware Workstation. In my case, I used a NTFS formatted USB drive on my own laptop and shared it to the XenServer VM running Windows.

2) On the VM running windows that you want to convert, download the VMware standalone converter from https://my.vmware.com/web/vmware/evalcenter?p=converter . You will have to create a VMware account, but then the standalone converter is free after you create your VMware account. Install it onto the XenServer based VM.

3) Run the standalone converter, and have it save the file to a share you setup in step #1. Once the converter is done, shutdown the VM on XenServer.

4) Move the files over the VMware Workstation. In my case, I just plugged in the USB drive from my laptop and moved files over to the new server. You can then simply add the VM into VMware’s Workstation. Once you boot up the VM, have it load the VMware tools. This will get the VM running better on VMware Workstation.

5) On the VM, remove all the Citrix tools and VMware Standalone Converter.

I found this to be the easiest way to convert from XenServer to VMware workstation.