how P2V in Proxmox ?

M

Mehrdad.x

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Jan 31, 2025
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Hello

explain first:

There is an small company, they have an HP Z440 Workstaion, thair Servers are on PCs and i want to move them on Z440

I prefer to use Proxmox but i have no idea how to p2v with proxmox as there is no official tool for that but in other hand i can use esxi with vmware p2v converter that is a reliable tool.

so i can use Proxmox ?
 
Any tool that allows booting a live system on the physical host and the target VM to transfer disk contents.

That can be just a regular Linux live system and dd + ssh on both sides. Or something more guided like Clonezilla. There are surely also other more commercial tools out there that can do the same thing.

Afterward, you most likely have to go through a few post migration steps, for example adapting the network config, install guest tools and so forth. On Windows, switching to the VirtIO Drivers can be a bit more complicated. See the "Post Migration" section here: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migrate_to_Proxmox_VE
 
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Mehrdad.x said:
filezilla and then cli commands is not fast and reliable enough
Click to expand...
No software is probably going to be either faster or more reliable than an image of the physical disks together with CLI commands.

One other probable rule; if someone does not know how to achieve P2V manually - he probably won't manage with software either.
 
I'm new to Proxmox, and I love everything so far about it. And it keeps getting better. However I do understand what Mehrdad.x is asking. I'm in the process of migrating over from the Evil VMWare platform. The one nice tool they had was their Stand alone Converter tool. It took an image of a workstation physical or virtual and would remotely load it in to an EXSi host.
If any of the amazing and incredible Proxmox developers are looking for ideas, a converter tool like that would be a nice feature. It could be built in to Proxmox VE or PDM or even to the Backup Server. Or just as a stand alone tool.
I know there are a lot of free tools out there that will convert to an image, like Clonezilla, etc. but then its a matter of converting to correct format, building the VM with correct specs, attaching the drive, and then pray it starts up.
I'm just saying it would be a nice feature to have.
 
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If you're P2V'ing a bunch of Win PCs, you can use Veeam Free Agent to make backups to, and restore from, a Samba share. VFA will also do driver injection on restore but you'll probably have to uninstall any hardware-specific software and drivers. And you'll want to install the virtio and qemu-guest-agent

You may also want to try DiskGenius, YMMV

If their servers are on Linux, you may want to try Relax and Recover (REAR)
 
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gfngfn256 said:
The poster's request is for a P2V tool within PVE.
Click to expand...
and my reply was to @AceBandge who asked
AceBandge said:
'm in the process of migrating over from the Evil VMWare platform. The one nice tool they had was their Stand alone Converter tool. It took an image of a workstation physical or virtual and would remotely load it in to an EXSi host.
If any of the amazing and incredible Proxmox developers are looking for ideas, a converter tool like that would be a nice feature. It could be built in to Proxmox VE or PDM or even to the Backup Server. Or just as a stand alone tool.
Click to expand...

OPs question has already been answered afaict. if its not clear- use clonezilla. in the list of priorities for the devs to follow I'd much rather them add useful features or squash bugs then add a tool for a solution that already exists.
 
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alexskysilk said:
OPs question has already been answered afaict. if its not clear- use clonezilla. in the list of priorities for the devs to follow I'd much rather them add useful features or squash bugs then add a tool for a solution that already exists.
Click to expand...
I was referring to what the OP was saying. I understand about the Importer tool that PVE has currently and I love it, but it is only for importing a VM, i.e. from an ESXi Host, and that's V2V. But I meant to say that it would be nice to either have an option built in to PVE that would let users to grab a physical machine and import it in to PVE without having to use a third party program like clonezilla. Or to have their own Proxmox converter tool that could be run from the workstation, convert and import to a PVE node, there by creating the VM with hardware config etc. ready to spin up.
Like the OP, I was just using as an example VMWare's Converter tool, after installing it to the physical machine you just give it the credentials of the EXSi server and confirm the workstations hardware settings and hit start. Then just wait for it to be sent to the server and it's done. No extra steps, just boot it up. I also thought a tool like that could be a nice add in to the Backup Server.
For example, I have a Synology Rackstation that has an 'Active Backup for Business' application. it can take an image backup from a physical computer or server for backup purposes, and then be imported to their Hypervisor Manager, but I don't want to run my VDI network on a Synology NAS.
I'm sure the devs at Proxmox are very smart and creative, so I just wanted to toss in an idea for an added feature.
 
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