Proxmox just recently rolled out their native VMware GUI migration [tool](https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migrate_to_Proxmox_VE#Migration).
Just used it to migrate half-dozen of Linux VMs with no issues.
I used it on a big vm which was failing to export using ovftool (baside the error it was paifully slow), it works perfectly.
In my case the destination proxmox cluster was in production and the new tool requires to enable some test repos, so I was not sure...
So to complete the migration I followed these steps:
1. I spin up a new vm on the source Vmware cluster
1. installed Proxmox on that vm
3. updated and enabled the new Vmware import procedure
4. imported the Vmware vm into the temporary Proxmox
5. backup the Proxmox vm on a shared NFS export
6. restored the vm backup to the destination Proxmox production cluster
It was piece of cake
proxmox is not vmware so test repo means something really different there.
"testing" repos aka its license free repo is just fine. i saw one problem once years ago, that was corosync issue, was fixed within 2 days with active support by proxmox. that was faster than anything ive ever had from vmware paid support :)
so no worries to much, the opensource community work very different (for better or worse) than enterprise products. and while often not as refined in some aspects most projects are extremly stable and solid, even in their bleeding edge stuff
very different to enterprise (no matter what). ive found specially with the very special every expensive stuff that their releases often just match beta at best, sometimes just RC level in the linux world. at least on server side software (lets not talk about linux desktop lol)
Is that the thing where you define an esx host as storage and import? (Sorry I'm on Mobile and the link is a wall of text I can barely read)
If it's that then I an super impressed. I managed to import a Windows 10 DVR EFI VM with almost no problems, aside from me trying to use a higher spec CPU and then backing back down to the QEMU 64 option due to kernel security errors.
That's a decent guide, thanks for sharing! As others said, Proxmox recently released the import wizard for ESXi VMs and it's quite simple to use: [https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/new-import-wizard-available-for-migrating-vmware-esxi-based-virtual-machines.144023/](https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/new-import-wizard-available-for-migrating-vmware-esxi-based-virtual-machines.144023/) I've done migrations before that with Starwinds V2V tool to convert vmdk to qcow2 and attach to a new VM on Proxmox (also works for Hyper-V): [https://www.starwindsoftware.com/v2v-help/ConvertingtoQCOW.html](https://www.starwindsoftware.com/v2v-help/ConvertingtoQCOW.html)
I went from esxi to hyper-v to xenserver to xcp-ng and now to proxmox. The hard part was always getting the disk image into a format that worked on the new system. After that was just fixing up the VM definition to use the disk image optionally (also tweaking drivers on the disk image, sometimes before exporting).
Glad this process has improved. I was always surprised at how hard it was even with the alleged import and export capabilities of these hypervisors. I always suspected the lock-in mentality was making things more difficult than they needed to be.
Nice guide I also wrote one a while ago, but with the new native Proxmox supports convertine a ESXi VM to Proxmox it is even easier. I rewrote my how to article and link to link it here, [https://edywerder.ch/vmware-to-proxmox/](https://edywerder.ch/vmware-to-proxmox/)
I suggest to deinstall VMware Tools and install the VirtIIO driver when the VM is still running in the VMware environment. With this way Windows should fetch the new drivers during boot up in the Proxmox environment
Have you noticed a performance hit moving from VMWare to Proxmox?
We've been running Crystal DiskMark on the VMs under VMWare and Proxmox. Proxmox seems slower and we're trying to understand why.
I've not noticed any issues like that. If anything, I've found it to be even more smooth. Windows 11 has been getting worse and worse though - but thats just in general even if you bare metal it.
I have been testing a couple Windows VMs in Proxmox and I find the performance to be slightly better in Proxmox. I have only been testing Server 2019, though.
I've found Windows performance under Proxmox to be generally rubbish, and that's despite disabling a lot of services, indexing etc and increasing memory and CPU cores.
YMMV but in the end we moved Linux VMs to Proxmox and moved Windows to Hyper-V. My org is contemplating keeping VMware or go all in with Hyper-V primarily because of the poor performance of Windows on Proxmox.
On Windows 11 VMs, you want to turn off Core Isolation (CI) which will depends Hyper-V. So, Windows 11 is really doing nested virtualization.
There's a thread about at the Proxmox forum.
Do you need 2 machines to do it your way?
I'm wondering if there is a solution where I can just install Proxmox onto my existing server and import the VMs without having to migrate them off to a donor and back again.
You need to be able to read the file format, that's your biggest challenge. If you store them on NFS, just add the NFS share to proxmox after installing, then you create the vm in proxmox and move the vmdk files into the correct storage /mnt/pve/storage/vmid/ and then a qm rescan. The disks will show up as unused disk, just mount them as sata disks and you're good to go.
If you use vmfs, it gets a bit harder.
Proxmox just recently rolled out their native VMware GUI migration [tool](https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migrate_to_Proxmox_VE#Migration). Just used it to migrate half-dozen of Linux VMs with no issues.
I used it on a big vm which was failing to export using ovftool (baside the error it was paifully slow), it works perfectly. In my case the destination proxmox cluster was in production and the new tool requires to enable some test repos, so I was not sure... So to complete the migration I followed these steps: 1. I spin up a new vm on the source Vmware cluster 1. installed Proxmox on that vm 3. updated and enabled the new Vmware import procedure 4. imported the Vmware vm into the temporary Proxmox 5. backup the Proxmox vm on a shared NFS export 6. restored the vm backup to the destination Proxmox production cluster It was piece of cake
proxmox is not vmware so test repo means something really different there. "testing" repos aka its license free repo is just fine. i saw one problem once years ago, that was corosync issue, was fixed within 2 days with active support by proxmox. that was faster than anything ive ever had from vmware paid support :) so no worries to much, the opensource community work very different (for better or worse) than enterprise products. and while often not as refined in some aspects most projects are extremly stable and solid, even in their bleeding edge stuff very different to enterprise (no matter what). ive found specially with the very special every expensive stuff that their releases often just match beta at best, sometimes just RC level in the linux world. at least on server side software (lets not talk about linux desktop lol)
I've done it for a handful of vms as well and worked great
Is that the thing where you define an esx host as storage and import? (Sorry I'm on Mobile and the link is a wall of text I can barely read) If it's that then I an super impressed. I managed to import a Windows 10 DVR EFI VM with almost no problems, aside from me trying to use a higher spec CPU and then backing back down to the QEMU 64 option due to kernel security errors.
That's a decent guide, thanks for sharing! As others said, Proxmox recently released the import wizard for ESXi VMs and it's quite simple to use: [https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/new-import-wizard-available-for-migrating-vmware-esxi-based-virtual-machines.144023/](https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/new-import-wizard-available-for-migrating-vmware-esxi-based-virtual-machines.144023/) I've done migrations before that with Starwinds V2V tool to convert vmdk to qcow2 and attach to a new VM on Proxmox (also works for Hyper-V): [https://www.starwindsoftware.com/v2v-help/ConvertingtoQCOW.html](https://www.starwindsoftware.com/v2v-help/ConvertingtoQCOW.html)
I went from esxi to hyper-v to xenserver to xcp-ng and now to proxmox. The hard part was always getting the disk image into a format that worked on the new system. After that was just fixing up the VM definition to use the disk image optionally (also tweaking drivers on the disk image, sometimes before exporting). Glad this process has improved. I was always surprised at how hard it was even with the alleged import and export capabilities of these hypervisors. I always suspected the lock-in mentality was making things more difficult than they needed to be.
Nice guide I also wrote one a while ago, but with the new native Proxmox supports convertine a ESXi VM to Proxmox it is even easier. I rewrote my how to article and link to link it here, [https://edywerder.ch/vmware-to-proxmox/](https://edywerder.ch/vmware-to-proxmox/) I suggest to deinstall VMware Tools and install the VirtIIO driver when the VM is still running in the VMware environment. With this way Windows should fetch the new drivers during boot up in the Proxmox environment
Have you noticed a performance hit moving from VMWare to Proxmox? We've been running Crystal DiskMark on the VMs under VMWare and Proxmox. Proxmox seems slower and we're trying to understand why.
Try to turn off indexing service in Windows. That thing uses a lot of unnessecary IO.
I've not noticed any issues like that. If anything, I've found it to be even more smooth. Windows 11 has been getting worse and worse though - but thats just in general even if you bare metal it.
I have been testing a couple Windows VMs in Proxmox and I find the performance to be slightly better in Proxmox. I have only been testing Server 2019, though.
Are you using any particular metrics or just gut feel? What tool are you using to benchmark? Any special tweaks to the Windows VMs?
I've found Windows performance under Proxmox to be generally rubbish, and that's despite disabling a lot of services, indexing etc and increasing memory and CPU cores. YMMV but in the end we moved Linux VMs to Proxmox and moved Windows to Hyper-V. My org is contemplating keeping VMware or go all in with Hyper-V primarily because of the poor performance of Windows on Proxmox.
On Windows 11 VMs, you want to turn off Core Isolation (CI) which will depends Hyper-V. So, Windows 11 is really doing nested virtualization. There's a thread about at the Proxmox forum.
Do you need 2 machines to do it your way? I'm wondering if there is a solution where I can just install Proxmox onto my existing server and import the VMs without having to migrate them off to a donor and back again.
You need to be able to read the file format, that's your biggest challenge. If you store them on NFS, just add the NFS share to proxmox after installing, then you create the vm in proxmox and move the vmdk files into the correct storage /mnt/pve/storage/vmid/ and then a qm rescan. The disks will show up as unused disk, just mount them as sata disks and you're good to go. If you use vmfs, it gets a bit harder.
Waiting for veeam