The Idiot clumsily migrates VMware VMs into ProxmoxVE

A quick and dirty guide on how to migrate VMware VMs to Proxmox Virtual Environment. Tested in the 5.0 Beta.

A quick and dirty guide on how to migrate VMware VMs to Proxmox Virtual Environment. Tested in the 5.0 Beta.

Steps

  • Remove VMware Tools from the VM you wish to migrate.

  • Download and run the MergeIDE registry edit to make the system bootable by IDE.

  • Shut down the VM in VMware.

  • Convert the VMDK files to a single grow-able file using vmware-vdiskmanager (may be a separate download):

    C:/location/of/vmware/vmware-vdiskmanager.exe -r tobeconverted.vmdk -t 0 converted-pve.vmdk

  • Allow the conversion to complete.

  • Update your local storage on the Proxmox node to allow Disk Images: Datacenter → Storage → Local.

  • Create a KVM VM using the Proxmox web GUI, with the hard disk type set to VMware, stored on local (not local-lvm).

  • Do not start the VM.

  • Take note of the VM ID (e.g. 109).

  • SCP into the Proxmox node and navigate to /var/lib/vz/images/VMID.

  • Delete the disk associated with the VM (e.g. vm-109-disk1).

  • Upload your converted VMDK, renamed appropriately.

  • In the Proxmox web GUI, select Move Disk and choose local-lvm as the target. Delete the source if you want.

  • Allow the disk move to complete — this may take a few minutes.

  • Start the VM in Proxmox and check progress in the console.

Going Further

VMware VMs work in Proxmox, but they aren’t the most performant format. If you want to go one step further — at the cost of a little backwards compatibility — convert the disk image to qcow2 using the built-in qemu-img utility:

qemu-img convert -f vmdk -O qcow2 winServer.vmdk winServer.qcow2
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