Recently, I was doing a hot P2V of Windows 2003 server from HP Hardware to a virtual machine. It was bad experience that the data transfer was slow of about 64 KB/s showing 7 days remaining.

Many times, the task was cancelled and re-initiated, however with no success. tried disabling McAfee and backup services.

Later, I found an VMware KB article on disabling the SSL which fixed my issue with the data transfer of about 7-8 MB/s.

Please follow the below steps to disable SSL:-

1 – Locate “converter-worker.xml” on a machine on which the VMware Converter is installed and open in a text editor.
2 – Locate the tag pair<useSsl></useSsl>. It is located inside the<nfc>tag and has a value oftrue.
3 – Change the SSL Key <useSsl> true </useSsl> to false (“<useSsl>false</useSsl>”).
4 – Save and close the file.
5 – Restart “VMware vCenter Converter Standalone Worker” service.

Tips:
“converter-worker.xml” This file is location in the following locations
Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows 2008 %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\VMware\VMware vCenter Converter Standalone
Windows XP, Windows 2003, Windows 2000 %ALLUSERSPROFILE%\Application Data\VMware\VMware vCenter Converter Standalone

Thanks,

WintelAdmin

Source:  kb.vmware.com/kb/2020517. Thanks to VMware Knowledge Base.