How can I migrating from ESXi 9 to Proxmox VE on a Single Dell R740

[johnzapf]

I recently upgraded my ESXi host from 8.3 to 9.0, and now my license is no longer valid. ESXi reports that I have 90 days remaining, and unfortunately it won't allow me to roll back to 8.3.

I've been considering moving to Proxmox VE for quite a while, so I guess this is the push I needed. My biggest challenge is figuring out the best migration path with only a single server.

My server is a Dell PowerEdge R740 with eight drives configured as follows:

• 2 × 256 GB SSDs (RAID 1) – currently running the ESXi 9 (OS)
• 3 × 4 TB drives (RAID 5) 8TB's – hosting all of my virtual machines (DATA)
• 3 × 16 TB drives (RAID 5) 32 TB's – used for backups and storage

My thought is to replace the two SSDs that currently contain ESXi with two new SSDs, create a new RAID 1 array, and install Proxmox VE there. That part seems straightforward.

What I'm trying to determine is the best way to migrate or import the existing VMs from the 4 TB RAID array into Proxmox VE with just the one server. Is there a recommended migration process that preserves the virtual machines, or is there a better approach that you would suggest? backup, export?

I'd really appreciate any advice or recommendations you have.

Not sure if Proxmox VE will import a ESXi Backup configBundle-ESXi.tgz?

Thank you for your time.

 

[tomservo]

I would not try to do it all on one machine if those VMs are at all important to you. It is always a good idea to have a fallback plan.

I would take any machine you can get to make a temporary proxmox box, even if it is a laptop or something that you wouldn't want to run as a server. As long as you can install proxmox on it, and it has enough RAM to run the largest VM. That should let you import the VMs, and make sure they are working, with an easy way to fall back to ESXi if needed. Once they are all working on that machine, you should be able to install proxmox on the actual server, and migrate the VMs over to it.

 

[uzumo]

It's not impossible, but whether you can do it depends on you, so please decide for yourself if you think you can.

https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Advanced_Migration_Techniques_to_Proxmox_VE#Virtual-to-Virtual_(V2V)

I think the section titled “Server self-migration” covers what you’re talking about.

The procedure for running “apt install vmfs6-tools -y” to enable (read-only) access to the vmfs6 file system and perform the conversion is described here.

Even if someone asks me, “Can you do it?” I’ll say I don’t know because I don’t like converting the entire OS from the source to the destination.

 

[Johannes S]

No matter how you approach it: Create backups of your vms before and test restores