[SOLVED] Import from vmWare problems: machines do not boot

[mii]

Hello,

we are intending to replace our old vmWare machine (VMWare 6.0.0) with Proxmox (Proxmox VE 8.2.2) (and oVirt as well, next step..).

When trying to import machines from vmWare, I keep running into problems booting the machines. Any help would be appreciated

The import itself runs: the import wizard from ESXi storage runs through and creates a machine.

I have tried importing various machines, based on either 32 bit or 64 bit Windows, in a few different versions. The end result has always been the same.
The import of a CentOS machine (there is only one on the vmWare machine) did not work out either, but symptoms are slightly different.

I know that the imported is tested with VMWare 6.5.0 upwards, and my system is older. I don't really want to update VMWare, and I am not sure this is the problem either - when importing the machines via VirtualBox, I get the same error.

I have tried exporting to VirtualBox on my computer. This works fine. Exporting from Virtualbox, then importing the OVA, leads to the same result as a direct import from ESXi.

In other words: An export from VirtualBox OVF, and manual import via

qm create 108 --scsi0 datapool-zfs:0,import-from=/mnt/pve/nasfolder/W7_Machine-disk001.vmdk --boot order=scsi0

ends up with the same result. This command is based on information here.

An example
This is what happens for one of the machines. The rest are similar.

Import looks fine:

create full clone of drive (vmWare:ha-datacenter/datastore1/W7 Machine_1/W7 Machine_1.vmdk)
transferred 0.0 B of 32.0 GiB (0.00%)
transferred 327.7 MiB of 32.0 GiB (1.00%)
...
transferred 32.0 GiB of 32.0 GiB (100.00%)
scsi0: successfully created disk 'datapool-zfs:vm-105-disk-0,size=32G'
TASK OK

After creation, hardware looks like this:


The options (without the name):




When booting, I see that windows tries to start:


But fails soon, into "Windows error recovery":



CentOS machine

The CentOS machine lists a total of 4 drives, as expected, but boots into this:

 

[mii]

It seems the only change needed was to attach the main HD via IDE.

 

[aaron]

Checkout the post migration steps: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migrate_to_Proxmox_VE#Post_Migration

there is a link to the guide on how to switch Windows over to virtio drivers. For the dracut machine, it should work by booting into the rescue image that contains all drivers and rebuilding the regular boot image to include the virtio drivers as well.

 

[mii]

Thanks for the reply. I tried installing the most recent VirtIO drivers, but since these machines are old (Windows 7..) that did not work.

These machines are all very low use, performance is not an issue, and probably will be retired soon anyway. Is there any disadvantage to sticking with IDE?

 

[aaron]

you can get older virtio ISOs from the fedora project to see if they contain win7 drivers. the important part is to have the dummy disk using (virtio)scsi to show up in the disk mgmt of Windows before you detach & remove it. Only then can you power down the VM, switch the main disk to scsi and don't forget the boot order in the VMs options

 

[somebodyoverthere]

For Win7 try this older version

https://fedorapeople.org/groups/vir...o/virtio-win-0.1.173-4/virtio-win-0.1.173.iso

and also this after the VM is up and running

https://forum.proxmox.com/threads/w2008r2-unkown-device.51404/#post-310071

 

[mii]

Thanks for the specific version, that one worked.

I haven't removed the "Unknown device", but that doesn't really bother me at the moment.