Converting a Physical system to a Proxmox VM

[@leifhanson8900]

Dude, I like the way you relay the info without too much fluff. You make it easy to follow and you are very knowledgeable! Thank you for creating this video!

[@breakfastwitherik]

Thanks for taking the time to come up with multiple methods - which often happens when dealing with old hardware

[@mikekane9734]

Dude, thank you for another vid! I wish all the luck to you and your channel as you make really nice structured content I value a lot. Please post more.

[@FireTigerARG]

Man... really thankful for your will to share knowledge from a hands-on perspective. Straight to the point with no long theory preludes.

[@cybersechs1368]

Man.. this guy knows his STUFF!! I'm a newbie, but i wanna learn proxmox :D

[@alewi443]

This is a great resource. Thanks for posting! I've used Clonezilla in the past to create VMs from a physical system by creating a Clonezilla backup and then restoring from the backup image in a VM but I've never tried doing the network cloning approach you demonstrated. I'm looking forward to trying it out next time I migrate a physical system to a VM.

[@patrickemerson6464]

Thank you for a great video. Very clear for such a complex subject.

[@GeoffSeeley]

Another cool use of qemu-img and dd is you can use qemu to convert an ESXi vmdk disk image into a raw format (over the network using sshfs even!) and then use dd to write that raw image into a zfs zvol disk. I used this to migrate a VM from ESXi to Proxmox and that VM was previously a physical box about 10 years ago I converted using either p2v or likely dd/nc and similar techniques you describe here. Next I'll migrate the services in the VM to LXC containers.

[@Darkk6969]

Yep. I've moved few VMs from vmWare to ProxMox using the qemu convert tool and then copy the cow2 file directly on top of the existing vm disk inside ProxMox. Worked pretty well.

[@scottnolan2182]

Thanks for your brilliant content mate. Your videos have helped me learn more than any other KZbin videos for my home lab setup.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

Glad the videos have been helpful for you.

[@scottnolan2182]

Thanks for your brilliant content mate. Your videos have helped me learn more about configuring my home lab, than any other KZbin videos.

[@DawidKellerman]

Cool video ! I like installing the virtio-tools and then do the image so I can use the already installed drivers

[@MikeMeadors]

Thanks bro/ You are one of three people who really have helped me to get my proxmox off the ground. Headless and Passthrough-- It was a journey but now I have things the way that I want. I am planning on buying a Dell EMC PowerEdge R930 with 24bays and 384 GB of Ram. I hope that I can manage it. I just graduated from college and I want to have a nice multi-platform Proxmox server or try ESXi but first proxmox since it's so nice the GUI and the mobile app are amazing.

[@c0p0n]

Great, concise and touching the right spots as usual. Thank you.

[@SebastianPerezG]

Hey man , I'm so glad that i have been subscribed to your channel and your videos are very informative, i will try to make you more popular over youtube. I don't have any channel but i will put your link to everyone who has a channel like this, thanks for the info and i will try to do that.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

Glad my videos are informative and can help others. Thank you for sharing these videos to others they may be able to help.

[@SebastianPerezG]

@@ElectronicsWizardry Can you do the same but with a Linux physical drive or its the same ?

[@CustomRideOns]

This is very thorough and easy to follow. Thanks!

[@compukiller2]

If you already have created a VM, you could directly dd to the destination hard disk below /dev/pvm/ and latest with USB 3.0 the blocksize can be increase safely to 15M and more even for a cheap USB thumb drive and you don't need the spare storage for the intermediate image...

[@homemedia4325]

Perfect timing, this is on my todo list already :)

[@HoldFastFilms]

If you need to do the same and migrate to a Mac, Parallels does an amazing job too!

[@nalle475]

Nive video 👍Always used the dd and also conversion. Never tried the Disk2vhd or Clonzilla with Proxmox.

[@jairunet]

Thank you very much for the ideas and techniques shared, I am planning to virtualize all my home servers now that I have a mini PC with plenty of resources, it is time to move from some of those old systems I have at home, it hurts to see them go, but they do take a long time to do everything 😉 I might use them for bitcoin core nodes and bitcoin lightning network nodes though. Thanks again and I will definitely let you know how it went. Appreciate all you do!

[@makouille495]

dude you always nail it water clearly ! thanks for sharing your knowledge with us !

[@smashed5826]

Another option is using Acronis or easetodo backup to backup those images and create a recover image, then boot from the recover pe on proxmox vm, and recover the backup step by step. Great video though!

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

That's a good point. Most other backup or imaging software products can be used to move a physical system or another VM.

[@kjakobsen]

My company usually migrates between Hyper V and VMware, but the principles are interestingly similar. The Clonezilla trick is clever.

[@matzer.9469]

Wow! Great stuff, guy! Helps me a lot! Tank you very much!!!

[@uhack2417]

That’s a great video, thank you! One small tip: make sure to remove noise from your videos before uploading.

[@michalbarhon6692]

TIP: When Disk2VHd not work and you have Synology with Active Backup for Business you can backup the physical server to Synology and then recover it from backup directly in to the virtual machine. I did it many times and it works well. :) Also in case you had Windows installed on a machines with HW RAID controller you can face the issue with booting in VM. Then you need to boot windows installation CD and edit registers to disable raid drivers and force generic SATA/IDE drivers to be used to boot up the VM.

[@MaxKulik]

Brilliant video! Thanks for the help and keep up the great work!

[@MIDNITE69]

10/10 video! It's amazing that this is even possible

[@rcdenis1]

Thank you for posting. Been looking for how to do exactly that for a long time.

[@mhavock]

Good work on showing multiple methods and how they work! Next video is on how to setup a cloneserver in proxmox to reclone machines on the network quickly? 😁

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

Mylar you liked the video. Thanks for the idea of a cloning server video. I’ll work on planing that video now.

[@pauliussutkus526]

Your videos are very professional and informative, speaking about reviews and so on, I think you are on top. But to attract new people you should consider to take care of better sound and maybe add some notes etc(example: networkchuck). Anyway thnx for videos and move ff ;)

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

Can you explain more about taking better care of sound? Was there some audio issues that you noticed?

[@pauliussutkus526]

@@ElectronicsWizardry kzbin.info/www/bejne/jF7Rk6l3o9Zpa6s divide by 100 and you will hear that dirt or is it just me? Remember those times than we had analog television.

[@accesser]

Thank-you for this video, I'm importing my old Windows 11 image into Proxmox, after choosing to move my laptop to Linux , the OEM Win11 will live on in an isolated VM

[@blakenorthrup]

Great vid and instructions man! Very helpful and sub'd

[@rajveersingh2056]

I dont know how fucked up is the google/youtube search engine, i have been searching for this gold for 2 days...

[@randalwilliams9106]

Everything made sense up to 11:00. There you show you have SSHed into a directory file structure of Proxmox. But there is no "/sam/vmFiles/images/xxx" path, and if there were, how would the M6600.VHDX file get there?

[@driedekker]

I have the same problem. lost me here not found this

[@KumarKadatoka]

You literally shouldn't be watching this video because you'll end up causing more damage to your own setup than solving issues. This VHDX was created as shown minutes ago in the video in the windows host to be migrated itself and copied into a USB drive which was referenced later. If you don't understand basics then you shouldn't be trying this because you will end up with issues you won't figure. No malice intended, just raising a wholehearted concern here. Cheers.

[@filmo]

I agree, there are some critical steps missing in the 'dd' from attached SATA drive section of this video. It appears that he is creating the dd image file into his ZFS pool, but would be benefit if the demo was for a 'stock' Promox Install where the main storage is 'local-lvm'. As it is I'm lost as well. I get what kumar is saying about "don't try if you don't know", but in a tutorial video, it should cover all the steps so we can learn

[@bumpsy2358]

@@KumarKadatoka You need to slow down, because what the op said was legit. And I know exactly what I am doing. He totally did not show how he got the .vhdx file into the folder in his proxmox dump directory. So be concerned, but knowing what you are talking about in the process will help, no malice intended.

[@santiagonottoli]

Excellent video... thank you so much...

[@youtubewzd2196]

Small voice over mistake in 16:30: The if= parameter in dd specifies device /dev/sdo (letter o) not 0 (number zero). The command shown is correct though. Btw instead of dd you can also use buffer, does the same but is supposedly a bit faster.

[@TheBeardedLibertarian]

Worked like a charm for windows 11

[@firewall6810]

best explanation i´ve ever seen.

[@lubeda04]

cant wait to test this methods

[@ClayBellBrews]

Great walkthrough, I think I’ll use dd with nc (netcat), but the windows vhd also looks great.

[@AbdulQayyum-fq6vg]

Thanks, this was really useful.

[@taurolyon]

Excellent vid! I've got some systems with a 1TB drive, but they're only useing maybe 10% of it. Will these methods reduce the file size, or create a full 1TB file? I know DD does this when you specify the block device /dev/sdx (without the number).

[@4evermetalhead79]

Based info. Much appreciated. 👍

[@HtopSkills]

Good explanation

[@UnkleGoof]

Subbed, been trying to use a vhdx that i converted to a Qcow2 that i was running on a physical machine and going to see if this has my answer. thanks again for your content

[@giorgosliappis9685]

Excellent presentation!

[@fredbecker607]

Have been looking for this exact method. Trying to change an old widows box to proxmox.

[@Bulbulatoric]

Thanks! You save a lot of my time

[@chromerims]

dd is so nice. Great video 👍

[@MickV13243]

I tried using the dd method, but I'm a bit lost with where to place the raw file. It's currently sitting in my root directory, I don't know where proxmox stores its raw files for the VMs. My default one that I'm trying to replace is in local-lvm but I don't know how to get the raw file from root to local-lvm. Also does it matter what you name the raw file? I also noticed you used sata devices for your drives, mine are virtio drives, does that matter? I'm also trying to copy linux mint btw instead of windows if that makes any difference.

[@NicholasSouris]

Pretty complete instructions. Thanks.

[@JayH_Norway]

Thanks for this!

[@the_nurk]

quite literally a god

[@Sapious1]

This was a great video, thank you. I've always enjoyed your videos... So after watching I decided to do a test with a Win 10 Ent server and it worked flawlessly using Win2VHD which I ran remotely on the server from another location, copied the file to a NAS and downloaded the 87TB file to my Promox server for the test. What I don't understand is why did you specify creating a hard disk on the VM at 2m:45s in the video? Is this step actually necessary? After my clone and successful boot off the cow2 image. I ended up just deleting that unused disk from the VM later...

[@thesecretreviewer8242]

great technical info... thanks man

[@rukhanzakaria]

Wow, very detail video as always. Maybe p2v startwind for next video tq.

[@WOTBLITZ_-xx1uf]

You rock man !

[@darklemon1]

Great work my man!

[@undergroundnews_dk]

Greate guide - I have been translating local proxmox qcow2 images small ssd to be on my nfs file server but it did timeout, then I tried to use raw and it was working with no timeout. I am not really sure how qcow2 compares to raw but having the images on my nfs nas does make it quick to move a running system to anothor proxmox node.

[@Yazon2006]

You looks like a wizard!

[@ВладимирГригорьевич-у2р]

братан, ты красавчик, спасибо тебе за инструкцию

[@lukebrinkman9263]

thanks for your guidance so many options but I keep getting a BSOD on just a simple laptop to vm migration. Tried qcow2 and raw images as well. I'm sure I'll get it just new to Proxmox coming from ESX migration was so easy.

[@rohitbuchake]

Great... Thanks for this Video

[@bencreateddisco]

thanks, this was very helpful

[@GadgetManMatt]

Nice one geezer!

[@timg2382]

Is b_SamFile a Directory or LVM? I cant find my lvm-thin in the directoty structure in your video. Also, thanks for another great video. You alone are helping survive migrating to Proxmox!

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

Samfile is directory storage in this video. Glad I could help.

[@Skukkix23]

Sorry, but I am stuck again: I have the qcow file in a from me created directory in /etc/vhdximages/ . At 12:19 you mention to add the sata disk you gonna link the repository. How do I find out what my version for b_SamFile would be?

[@timg2382]

For disk2vhd, mountdrive X: /S required on windows for efi drive? A lot of guides uses this and qm importdisk

[@chris415-a]

This what I need to do, I have a 3 node proxmox 8.0 set up as a cluster, and I'd like to upgrade the ssd drive from 256g to 2tb, was watching this video, and was thinking of following your instruction for clonezilla, and run it in a vm on another node, and then connect the ssd thru a usb dongle to the source vm, and let it copy directly, or wasn't sure if I should just use a disk duplicator, and then resize the partition when I reinsert into my tiny server

[@robear0135]

I like you tutorials, but sometimes missing the cleanup stage afterwards. I know this is 9 months later, but once you have attached the image file and are booting from it. do you need the 240GB Sata0 drive you originally created to run the VM up? Thanks.

[@peterblanker7363]

Yeah, I got lost there too... if you're booting directly from the image file, why even have the 240GB sata drive? nowhere does it show that you copied the image file to the 240GB drive. So why even create it if you're just going to run the VM directly from the image file?

[@fmorenoj]

Hello, thanks for all theses videos, do you know some information about keep hostid using clonezilla to clone windows server ? thanks

[@bigddybn]

This is a great video but where is /sam/vmFile/images shown at 11:00? Where do you actually copy the converted qcow2 disk image to on the proxmox host? I'm using the default local-lvm that I have a feeling a lot of people reading this are also using.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

I have found it easiest to make a temp location for the qcow2/raw file, then use the move disk function in proxmox to move the storage to LVM. In your setup running off a single boot drive this is what I'd do -Enable disk image storage on the local file storage -Copy the qcow2 file to the local file storage location, this is /var/lib/vz/images/VMID/. You may need to make the VMID folder. -Use the move disk function in Proxmox to move the storage form the Qcow2 storage to LVM. Then remove the Qcow2 file.

[@bigddybn]

@@ElectronicsWizardry Thank you for the stupid fast reply. My proxmox host is on a 1TB NVME drive and the installer created the "local" storage as only 100GB so my 150GB disk image won't fit. Is there a way to copy to local-lvm instead? Also forgive another noob question but don't I need to already have the disk attached to a VM to use the move disk function?

[@bigddybn]

For some reason I was way overthinking this. Copied the image to a network storage that proxmox has under the images/###/ folder. Created a VM with the same ID, did a qm rescan which picked up my copied disk image. Added it to the VM and then moved it to my NVME storage. I now have the converted disk image attached to my VM. Thanks!

[@johnwatson2843]

Very good explanation of all possibilities and really amazing tutoring! Could you make a follow up video about keeping the dns/dhcp settings of the original machine or the additional steps required in proxmox so that the new proxmox pc is also almost identical in terms of plugging it in?

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

Sure I’ll add that to my possible video list. But one way to do this is to tell proxmox to use the same MAC address as the old physical system. Then the dhcp server will see it as the same computer and hand out the same ip.

[@GutsyGibbon]

Nice job, thanks. Isn’t there a way to specify a file on the server to be vm disk image? Other than editing the config file?

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

The Proxmox web gui only allows selecting a Proxmox storage repository for disks. You need to edit the config file to use a full path.

[@ladreamin5008]

Very informative and educational fun video! Liked and subscribed !

[@xandercode]

what's the dell or hp machine 0.29 I have few ive used in the past for Proxmox. I was just interested what you are using yours for. Love the vide btw great channel

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

That system is a custom build on a old hp case that had a dead motherboard. I’m currently used it for drive endurance testing with a am1 motherboard.

[@xandercode]

@@ElectronicsWizardry Ahh cool thanks for the reply. Great channel I always check to see if there is anything new. I've just set up my old ubuntu machine for VMware. I was having trouble passing Gpu though in Proxmox so has to go another route. I'm an open-source guy but I've been setting up hyper v lately to learn that more as well.

[@maycontainhyjinks2347]

super helpful!

[@Dreamwoodinternational]

Thank you for all the detail in your video. Can you confirm whether a Windows instance will be automatically activated if its 'lifted' from disk by Disk2Vhd and then 'dropped' into a VM on Proxmox, as you show here? I just purchased a refurbished Dell T7820 with 'Win10 Pro for w/s' and want to make it a Proxmox box, but with a Win10 Pro VM. Of course I don't have the original Win product code - hence my question about 'automatic activation'. I expect it should work, as the motherboard is the same - and licence is tied to mobo, right? Just be nice to hear it confirmed from the wizard 😃 Thank you.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

I can't confirm the license will stay interact when moving the vm, and I'd guess the license may have issues as its tied to the hardware and windows detects a hardware change. There are multiple ways that windows can be activated though, so I can't be fully sure what would happen here.

[@Dreamwoodinternational]

@@ElectronicsWizardry Thank you for the quick reply. I was thinking that if it all happens to the same box, there is no change to hardware. Anyhow, I found a way to identify the product key and how to 'remove' the licence, so I should be covered.

[@RaviShankar-xr8jj]

How to add all drives to proxmax.. I can't see my HDD but only see ssd in which proxmox is installed? How to contact u?

[@sigmata0]

Cool, thank you. Where appropriate, can you install the VirtoIO drivers for Windows onto the original physical device, before you copy the clonezilla image? I would have thought that would make using VirtIO drivers later much easier.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

I have never tried installed the virtio drivers before the migration, but I don't think it would matter when its installed. I find it easier to install the drivers after the migration as I can easily add a ISO CDROM to the VM. I don't think when the drivers are installed should affect performance or stability of the VM.

[@sigmata0]

@@ElectronicsWizardry It won't make any difference after it's installed. The only difference is the accessibility of devices from initial startup of the migrated VM.

[@NoahWatkins-p4z]

well done! Thank you

[@ierosgr]

At 11:41 what would you put as option -0 to output it as raw instead of qcow2? I mean the whole command not just the .raw suffix

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

the -O options for a raw file would be raw. So the full command would be qemu-img convert -O raw inputDisk.vhdx outputDisk.raw

[@fourex59]

Hello, at timestamp 10:58 you use the program “qemu-img”. How did you get that program onto your Promox machine? Please explain. Thanks.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

Qemu-img should come pre installed on proxmox. Try running it and if you get an error about not enough arguments it’s in there.

[@dj-a]

CloneZilla (actual version) failed when I tried to migrate Ubuntu 12.04 i386 to PVE VM. But dd over netcat worked perfectly :)

[@icepath2019]

Sorry, when i'm booting show error = No bootable device. Retrying in 1 seconds.

[@mbeware]

Hello, This is answer many of my questions. I was wondering if I could use the physical disk as the boot disk for my VM without making any copy? That would save time and reduce possible error.. and would that increase performance of the VM afterward? Thanks, Martin!

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

You should be able to use a disk passthrough and boot from it. So in the config file for the vm set it to the path of the drive, like /dev/side for example

[@thneuburger8977]

hi, i wanted to ask, if it is possible to clone a Windows 2012 Server too, or is it only for normal Windows systems? thanks in advance for your (or somebodies) answer.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

Windows server should work the same as windows desktop here. There may be some extra config if the server has special services, licensing or functions but I’ve done windows server migrations that are working well to this day.

[@thneuburger8977]

@@ElectronicsWizardry thank you very much, this was the fastest answer i got ever ;-). i will try to virtualize this old server, but first i have to setup a proxmox server. thx again

[@johnarmada4076]

Have a little problem while migrating my physical windows to proxmox server. " Error found No bootable device " Hope for a response. Thanks!

[@davidkamaunu7887]

I had issue with installing Proxmox to a R340 server. It wouldn’t allow MBR/BIOS or legacy boot.

[@sharphedgehog]

I need your help. I have a SSD from my old PC. I connected it to Proxmox server and created IMG and then renames to RAW. But I have only single file. When I create VM I select UFI and it create 2 discs. I do not know where I connect my disk.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

I’d skip the efi part and it should work with one partition. Most oses will work with no separate efi disk and when installed on metal they use a efi partition for efi data.

[@MickeyMishra]

I just thought of something. Would this allow me to use an older version of Windows I use for Video Editing? If the USB does work? That would be great! I use an older Pinnacle Video editing rig, and would LOVE to use the hardware and software features it has for old VHS video tapes I come across. This would be a game changer as I could get rid of the old machines I have around. And just keep the hardware that I need for the physical transport of the signal to digital.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

Converting those old systems to VMs should work and usb passthrough has worked fine with all the devices I can remember using. There might still be some weird issues but I’d give it a shot and see if works here and I think your chances are good.

[@ahmeddarko2528]

in my case using disk2vhdx i obtained a non bootable image. I had to use diskpart to make a hidden partition visible to disk2vhdx to see

[@magicmanj32]

Great Video....Subscribed ;)

[@nitronaf]

tried the DD method straight from disc into local proxmox zfs. getting an error "TASK ERROR: unable to parse zfs volume name 'myVM.raw'. triple checked your instructions not just how to move forward. thanx for vid anyway :)

[@perfectdarkmode]

What was the typo that you mentioned at 18:25?

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

I think I mistyped the storage path. One type in the path and it will give that errors that it can't access the storage.

[@perfectdarkmode]

@@ElectronicsWizardry I'm doing this with a centos baremetal machine using the dd method to NFS mount. When I boot up the vm, It gets stuck on "Booting from Hard Disk..." Not sure what is wrong haha

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

@perfectdarkmode check that you have the right disk selected as the boot drive and the legacy/uefi switch is correct too.

[@perfectdarkmode]

@@ElectronicsWizardry Was like BIOS mode. Now I think I just gotta figure out how to get Vitio drivers on the system cause it's in emergency mode and I think it's not reading the sda drive.

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

@perfectdarkmode if it’s in emergency mode I’d guess it can’t read the boot drive. Try changing the drive type to sata or ide which is more compatible with older oses. Most systems don’t like to have their boot devices driver changed and that’s likely the issue here.

[@yaroslavurshu2732]

Thanks man!

[@BryanChance]

Thanks!

[@DanieleCalecaDATASERVICE]

is the same the command with qemu in windows : qemu-img convert -f raw -O qcow2 \\.\PhysicalDrive0 c:\file.qcow2 ?

[@ElectronicsWizardry]

I haven’t tried that exact command but it seems like it would work. I’d make sure the drive isn’t mounted as it can cause issue when a drive is being used and backed up at the same time.

[@tazerpie]

What gets me is that you created an efi system which needs to set efi disk, didn’t use tpm which also needs tpm disk, i see neither of these in the setup menus, and when you change the disk to use the converted image there is no mention of what happens to the efi and tpm, does it just happen to work within the new disk image as if it was a passthrough?

[@chromerims]

IIRC there's a fTPM option that you can spoof into any vm in proxmox. But that's going off of my imperfect memory, so I might be strong. How that syncs with a ported-over ISO file, . . . I don't have any details. Good luck, friends! 👍