Migrate VMWare ESXI to Proxmox and OpenVZ

jeromeza

Hi,

I'm thinking of doing this due to licensing constraints.

Is there a way to migrate VMDK to OpenVZ?

I know I can just import the .VMDK file to Proxmox but then I wouldn't get the resource benefits of the shared OpenVZ Kernel so I'd prefer to convert the .VMDK images to work in OpenVZ - any tips / tricks on doing this?

Thanks,

Gunter

I don't believe this is possible. Considering that OpenVZ is container based virtualization and VMWare is full fledged virtualization.

Correct me if I'm wrong, I'm not totally sure, but I was in the same predicament some while ago.

geekalot

@jeromeza, Yes, you can do it.

I migrated a bunch of my VMware Server (not ESXi) VM's to Proxmox (both as OpenVZ & as KVM on Proxmox). Linux is smooth as silk. Windows can be a PITA due to drivers (disk and video).

Some standard rules apply: 1) disable VMware tools 2) Best IMHO to create new image and (for Linux) tar/untar into the new container.

Going to OpenVZ is easy. Going to KVM is a bit trickier. I've also done it for encrypted containers, so I know it can be done.

jeromeza

@geekalot could you please provide steps for the OpenVZ conversion? Thanks

geekalot

@jeromeza, I will not be posting that on this website.

If you want to discuss sending your VM for conversion, offline/via PM, we can do that. I am sure after posting this some of the experts here may likely provide their version of doing it for you. In fact, I think others may have posted their version of doing this already in another thread; try searching LET.

jeromeza

Hi,

I've found the answer to this, even if in the spirit of open source some people refuse to share.

Simply:

1.) In your VMWare VM - boot in to a LiveCD with a Linux environment

2.) Ensure you have sufficient space to create a tar.gz of your VM

3.) Create a tar.gz of your root directory after mounting it.

3.1.) mkdir /media/hddorig (this is where we will mount our volume we wish to convert)

3.2.) mount /dev/sda1 /media/hddorig (we mount or volume on our created mount point)

3.3.) We browse to our mounted point so we can start adding to archive.
cd /media/hddorig/ (important to archive from here to avoid path issues)

3.4.) We create our tar.gz volume - not I specify the current working directory so as to avoid pathing issues when extracting as i've noticed proxmox keeps paths and breaks things if you don't.

tar -pczf /media/mystorage/myvmdkvm.tar.gz .

Where /media/mystorage is where I want to store my new archive.

4.) SCP the tar.gz to Proxmox
scp myvmdkvm.gz root@proxmoxhost:/var/lib/vz/template/cache/

5.) In Proxmox add a new OpenVZ container and select your tar.gz as it's template and deploy.

6. Finished

NOTES:
1.) Make sure you have enough space on your OpenVZ container to restore the tar.gz
2.) I had some pathing issues when I didn't create the tar.gz within the current working directory, so I've opted to create the tar.gz within that volume so as to avoid issues.

I hope this helps someone out.

I'd like to thank nkawit from http://allworldit.com/ for showing me that this was possible.

Cheers,