Microsoft’s virtualization push has been growing for some time already, and yesterday it fired another shot in the direction of VMware users, announcing an updated Virtual Machine Converter that can move virtual machines from ESXi to Hyper-V.

That Microsoft wants to win over Vmware users is no secret – last year it pitched a free, online certification course to get Vmware experts up to speed with Hyper-V and its System Center 2012 R2 Virtual Machine Manager. Aside from this, Microsoft has gone to great lengths to illustrate how Hyper-V is racing ahead in certain markets, even if its data is a little questionable.

Most notably though was the 2012 introduction of its Virtual Machine Converter that’s capable of transforming .VMDK into .VHD with just a few clickety clicks of the mouse.

Yesterday, Microsoft rolled out version 2.0 of its Virtual Machine Converter, and once again it seems to have VMware in its sights, thanks to new functionality that’ll “migrate your VMware virtual machines straight to Azure… with a simple wizard driven experience.” Aside from this, Version 2.0 also includes a new PowerShell interface to support scripting and automation, which means that automated VM migration can also be achieved.

All of this will work on vCenter & ESX(i) 5.5, while the tool adds virtual hardware support, and expands the number of Linux guest OSes that can be migrated: CentOS, Debian, Oracle, Red Hat Enterprise, SuSE, and Ubuntu.

We can’t say we’re surprised that Microsoft has gone and addressed ESX 5.5 and Linux. Even though Wikibon reported recently that its Hyper-V has attained near-parity with VMware in hypervisor functionality, VMware is still the market leader, and Microsoft has to do all it can to win customers over to its side.

This move may have VMware slightly worried, because the ability to migrate VMs to Azure brings Microsoft that much closer to its vCloud Hybrid Service (VCHS) – something that VMware sees as an important way to differentiate itself.

In recent weeks we’ve seen VMware talk up a future in which virtually everything is ‘Software-Defined’ and it also hinted at a full release of ESX and vSphere at the time of its recertification policy announcement last month. The smart money is on VMware hitting back at Microsoft with a slew of updates at VMworld in San Francisco next August, which could well leave today’s Virtual Machine Converter update looking rather tame in comparison.

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