[SOLVED] ESXi import finishes immediately and doesn't copy hard disk file (Bare metal to Proxmox)

[stowellg2000]

Hi All,

I have been struggling with this project for about a week now trying to get my home server converted from bare metal to Proxmox. I used an application to convert my bare metal Windows install to a VMware VM on a test server, which worked great and I can boot the VM up just fine.

I know that there is now an import tool for ESXi, so I had hoped it would be an easy process to convert the VM, but not had any luck so far. I connected the ESXi instance in the Datacenter -> Storage tab and it can see the VM that I need. When clicking import and filling in all the details, it then says "Copying files" and finishes immediately with a success message. The disk is about 230 GB, so I know that it didn't finish that quick. When trying to boot the VM on Proxmox, as expected, it fails to find the drive.

I am using ESXi 6.5 on a PowerEdge T410 as the test server to initiate the transfer. I have tried to reboot both servers, change settings around, and tried a manual copy using the qm importdisk command, but it still doesn't work. The only weird thing I can see is that the ESXi datastore browser lists the main hard disk as a .mvmdk file instead of a regular .vmdk file, and looking online I can't find any information about that format. Again, the VM boots just fine on ESXi, so I know it is at least working. Any help would be appreciated on this.

 

[stowellg2000]

Alright, so after working on this for another 5 days straight and having no luck, I FINALLY had success tonight and my bare metal Windows Server install is now working on Proxmox. I know this is a unique situation, but I'll go ahead and put the steps below for anyone who might be in the same situation as me now or in the future.

Unfortunately, my situation did require multiple extra pieces of hardware to get everything transferred, so make sure you have a spare server/computer and at least one external USB hard drive available to you. You will need to install VMware ESXi on the spare server/computer and it also has to have enough space to transfer the entire contents of your current server. I recommend transferring only the boot drive this way and using an external USB hard drive to copy and transfer any extra data later in the process. I used ESXi 6.5 and you can easily download tons of old versions directly from Dell's support pages (if you have a Dell server to put it on that is). You can likely use version 6.7, 7.0, or 8.0 for this, but my spare server was not new enough for those. I did not have a license and used ESXi in evaluation mode throughout the entire process.

Once you have ESXi installed, you will need to install an application called StarWind Converter on the server you are trying to migrate. (It is free - https://www.starwindsoftware.com/starwind-v2v-converter). I then went through the steps to convert the physical server to ESXi: (P2V -> Entire Machine -> Remote ESXi Server -> Enter your ESXi host info -> Start). Let this process run and copy your bare metal install to VMware. Once this is done, boot up the VM on ESXi and make sure everything looks okay and is working as expected. NOTE: You will see an option to convert bare metal directly to Proxmox. That option does not work and will crash the application and possibly Windows. There is a post on the StarWind forum about this behavior and the company is aware of it, but a fix has not been issued as of writing this post.

Once you confirm everything is working as expected, you can install Proxmox on your final destination server if you haven't already. I would recommend NOT overwriting your original boot drive until you can confirm everything is correct. Now, you will need to install StarWind converter on another computer you have available to you (a Windows desktop computer is what I used). Launch the app and use the settings here: (Remote ESXi Server -> Enter ESXi host info -> Find the VM -> Now you can select Proxmox as the destination -> Enter Proxmox node info -> Enter new VM settings -> Start). This process took over 8 hours to complete for my 232GB VM. As long as you see it progressing, just leave it alone and check on it every hour or so. Once it was done transferring, I did have to change the OS type and a few other memory and CPU-related settings, but it booted up and I have never been so happy to see the Windows logo!

Some other notes:

- I never got the direct ESXi import to work in Promox, and this isn't entirely unexpected due to the odd file format that StarWind converts it to (.mvmdk instead of .vmdk). I noticed that in Proxmox it says the file type to import was .vmx, and that could explain the instantaneous import problem I initially posted about.
- I had initally to use StarWind and convert the physical machine to RAW (.img) format, and then import that file to Proxmox using the qm importdisk tool. This method would get stuck on the screen that says "SeaBIOS, Booting from Hard Disk" and never get past it. I checked so many forums online and tried different solutions, but never got it to work.
- I did attempt to download the .mvmdk file from ESXi and then import that to Proxmox, but it said that it was an invalid file type.
- I also tried to rename the .mvmdk extension to .vmdk and import that to Proxmox, but it failed about 15 seconds after starting and complained that the VMDK file was corrupt.

Hopefully, this forum post helps someone out there and they don't have to struggle for nearly as long as I did on this (supposed to be simple) project