New Import Wizard Available for Migrating VMware ESXi Based Virtual Machines

[jlauro]

Unfortunately it is not easy to rename the vdisk of a VM since it consists of multiple files and each file references other files internally. Hope the non-ascii issue get fixed but I have migrated my VMs using clonezilla manually in the end.

If you rename the vm, and than storage vmotion it to another datastore it will rename the files. Can be slow for a multiTB vm, but it's easy.

 

[z0ddein1]

If you rename the vm, and than storage vmotion it to another datastore it will rename the files. Can be slow for a multiTB vm, but it's easy.

Unfortunately not everyone has multiple datastores.

 

[witterholt]

Unfortunately not everyone has multiple datastores.

Yes, I face the same problem because my thin provisioned vm install depleted my storage at esxi8. Renaming the vmdk by using "vmkfstools - E" described here did not work resulting in a not recognized virtual hard drive. Reclaiming space by using "vmkfstools -K" and exporting by ovftool did not work either. So I hope the fix for importing esxi vm's with whitespace in the name becomes available soon so I can get access to my Home Assistant vm again.

 

[johnwbyrd]

This is a great start. Migrating out of VMware and other virtual machine types is probably the greatest source of friction for adoption of Proxmox. In the future, I hope to see more tools and an even more automated process for moving over hundreds or thousands of VMs from VMware.

 

[lgzcoollg]

Im change the vms' name which insteat the Whitespaces to _, and then migrat once time into wmware first. then migrat second time from vmware to pve after. i could be success.

im prepare to change the .vmx file at vmware datastores, include changer the file name and the contants in .vmx Which the path/file with Whitespaces.
and then try to migrat into pve.

 

[ronejamesdo]

Unfortunately it is not easy to rename the vdisk of a VM since it consists of multiple files and each file references other files internally. Hope the non-ascii issue get fixed but I have migrated my VMs using clonezilla manually in the end.

In ESXi the path to the files does not include the human versions of the volume name.

If you ssh into your ESXi server and cd to one of your volumes like this:

cd /vmfs/volumes/"your volume name with spaces and a plus sign"/

Where your ssh session will show you to be is actually something like:

/vmfs/volumes/5dc36516-5eff2340-36jh-90b11xtcce1f

I confess that I did not check whether changing "SSD Raid6 + 2 spares" to "SSD Raid6 and 2 spares" (IN THE ESXi GUI!) had any effect on the jumble of letters and numbers and dashes that represents the "real" name of the volume (to ESXi) but I would be pretty surprised if it did. For one thing the rename took 2 seconds and none of the 20+ production machines on the box noticed, and for another the .vmx and .vmdk files in /vmfs/volumes/5dc36516-5eff2340-36jh-90b11xtcce1f/MY-VMs are not date stamped from when I did I made that change (in fact no files in them are dated then, and turned-off vms have their months-old file dates).

This is ESXi 6.7.0 U3, ftr (and I am just a guy on a forum, I do not profess to be a VMWare expert).

RJD

 

[bellner]

So what I did to make import of WhiteSpaces work.

First I editet the my esxi according to https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migrate_to_Proxmox_VE#Considerations for Mass Import. I set the correct session settings. Then I deleted all snapshots of the VMs (Makes importing 4x faster)

And now to how to FIX the import even with whitespaces. I checked online the commit that fixes the problem and changed the file accordingly on my instance.

Commands
make a back-up of the file:

cp /usr/share/perl5/PVE/Storage/Plugin.pm /usr/share/perl5/PVE/Storage/Plugin.pm_bak

open file:
nano /usr/share/perl5/PVE/Storage/Plugin.pm

edit line 985: (You can see your current line in nano using Strg + c)
Remove everything including the or so the line looks like this:
($parent) = ($parent =~ /^(\S+)$/); # untaint

Reboot.
After that the import even with whitespaces worked for me.

I hope it helps.