Tuesday Tech Tip - Using OVF to Migrate Virtual Machines from ESXi to Proxmox

[@McGeeNZ]

Echoing the comments of everyone else, setting up my first Proxmox environment after the demise of ESXi and been looking for an easy way to migrate. Many thanks!

[@MarkRouleau]

Absolutely yes on the ISCSI mounting and migration.

[@SirBrickzAlot]

exactly what I've been looking for, thank you, now a subscriber. Also, we use Isci in our esxi cluster, we have 18 hosts. Definitely would appreciate a video on , all we have are iscsi datastores.

[@Darkk6969]

Perfect timing! I am in the process of moving away from vmware to ProxMox. I have several ESXi hosts in a cluster that will be redone as ProxMox host.

[@Darkk6969]

FYI... I've successfully moved all the VMs off of vmware onto ProxMox without issues. Only snag I've ran into was the BIOS mode. For some reason three VMs wanted UEFI instead of regular BIOS. Either way it all worked fine.

[@brick4667]

Please do the full migration guide. Specifically the easiest way to do this all on a single machine (ie. I have one server that's ESXi and want to make it Proxmox instead)

[@jmcc000]

Good video. I'm planning to move hardware this week and discovered that VMware have discontinued the free version ESXi. Proxmox is looking like a feasible alternative.

[@1990Kronic]

It is criminal how few people have seen your great videos. Thank you for this guide. It is exactly what I was looking for.

[@45Drives]

Much appreciated! Super happy that the content helped you out.

[@1990Kronic]

I moved my Domain controller from my ancient esxi host over to my brand new proxmox server. Can't wait to finally decommission that DL380 G7 out of my rack.

[@keithbaldwin3386]

Would definitely be interested in an iSCSI from VMware ESXi to Proxmox VE tutorial. This is good info. The other way I was doing it was downloading it from the ESXi web UI, then SCP the disks to the Proxmox storage before I performed the "qm importovf" step.

[@eugenesmirnov252]

fuse fs is very unreliable, but nfs solves the issue. It's possible to edit vm conf file, pointing in new location. And scp is good, but rsync might be faster sometimes.

[@wallaceandrade5230]

This video helped me a lot!! Really thanks, man!

[@DavidWiles]

A good tutorial. Showed me exactly what I wanted to do... One question though...Once you have migrated the VMs from ESXi to Proxmox and used "qm" to import the OVF, and if it was successful can you then delete or archive the original files/folder that OVFTool created?

[@45Drives]

Thanks for the kind words! Once you have successfully imported the VM's into Proxmox and are 100% that it was successful by testing it, it is now safe to delete the OVF manifest file, and even the VMDK that it pulled over from the original storage. At this point, the disks have been converted and added to your Proxmox storage array. Just make sure you test before deleting so you don't have to spend more time pulling the VM data over again from the ESXi environment. Hope this helps!

[@petersimmons7833]

Where was this when I tried converting a few months ago? :(

[@MirazimovPhotographer]

Awesome tutorial!!! Thank you!

[@andriansprasetyo5582]

do we need to unnistall the VMware tools first? Thanks a lot.

[@FirstClassPirate]

This was great!

[@zzzz4305]

Error: Cannot parse locator: i am getting this error, What could be the reason, please help

[@f1rules555]

Hello. When I do the ./Vmwar..... to install, I get the text for the license agreement and then I get asked to proceed (yes or no). I type yes and then it just reverts to command line. No progress after that. What am I missing? I am doing this on the Proxmox shell. Thanks!

[@gerards9304]

same here. did you solve it?

[@jamesstoffel6835]

Followed the steps to migrate a Win 2012, however on startup it goes into repair mode. I've gone through the comments, looking at possible solutions; none work. Has anybody has success moving a Win 2012 from Esx to Proxmox on first try? What, if any, settings were changed?

[@jamesstoffel6835]

Figured it out. Edited the .conf file (/etc/pve/qemu-server) Before: boot: order=scsi0;scsi3 scsi0: tank:vm-222-disk-0,size=578G AFTER: boot: order=sata0;scsi3 sata0: tank:vm-222-disk-0,size=578G

[@kklip]

Hi, great tutorial first of all. However, I just tried migrating a Windows server VM using this method but it won't start in the proxmox host. I manually selected the correct OS in the options, attached the virtIO iso as a DVD, still nothing. One thing I notice in the VM hardware page is that I see the disk has a .raw extension at the end if that matter? Any pointers would be appreciated:) Thanks

[@kklip]

Tried migrating an ubuntu server as well, but no luck with the same observations as before.

[@paspaiocaeedro4824]

I have the same issue. were you able to resolve it?

[@kklip]

​@@paspaiocaeedro4824 hi yes. Click on VM > Hardware > Processors > change type to "Host". That solved it for me.

[@spooterify]

Migrating from ESXi to Proxmox is really easy without using any tools. Simply copy over the image to /bar/lib/vz/images, convert to qcow2 and import to VM ID. Really simple.

[@mitcHELLOworld]

Yes - but the process in the video bypasses the need to manually create a VM on the Proxmox side matching the number of cores and memory etc. using the ovf tool it converts the image and creates the vm all in a single command… that’s kinda the point of the video :)

[@eugenesmirnov252]

Fair enough. But some caviats are here. 1 if we use vSwitch on ESXi with vlans, this method isn't so helpful. 2 the old VMs seldom views SCSi disks as bootable, so (in my case) all ends up as IDE. Really I don't see any value in installing any ovf-tools on PVE if it's possible to edit VM's conf file and (if it's needed) use qm disk import.

[@bocci572]

I was able to migrate an Ubuntu machine over. Didn't have any issues. The moment I did a windows 10 machine I get BSOD.

[@bocci572]

changing bios settings and had to switch .conf file to sata instead of scsi worked for me.

[@jamesstoffel6835]

@@bocci572 what BIOS settings needed switching? (Tried a W2012Svr and it won't boot; loops into repair)

[@bocci572]

@@jamesstoffel6835 by bios settings I meant that matching hardware to match vm bios on ESXi. If using UEFI OVMF with Q35 for machine. And for VM's I created that had standard bios told it to use SeaBIOS with Default (i440fx) I then went to /ect/pve/nodes/proxmox/qemu-server and edited the conf file for that machine to use boot: order=sata0 instead of scsi0. That allowed me to boot without the boot loop. This was the way I was able to fix mine. I am not sure if that is 100% as I am just learning things