Importing Virtualbox VM to Proxmox VE 6.x?

[Rick Wolf]

Hi,
I've been looking at videos and forums for importing VirtualBox VMs to Proxmox VE and so far it seem nontrivial with half success (not sure why).
Does V6.x bring any new features related to import Virtualbox VM like supporting OVA 2.0?

Thanks

 

[Dominic]

Oracle VM VirtualBox supports exporting appliances to OVF format. I suggest doing that. With a little luck importing to Proxmox VE should then be a single command qm importovf.

For documentation you should take a look at our migration guide. VirtualBox is not explicitly mentioned there yet, but the steps from other V2V migrations should be applicable.

Does V6.x bring any new features related to import Virtualbox VM like supporting OVA 2.0?

I haven't looked at OVA 2.0 yet, but generally improving the importing experience is a goal at the moment. See for example this patch.

 

[Rick Wolf]

Hi @Dominic
Thanks for your input and pointing the patch. I did review the migration guide and was not sure since I didn't see officially VirtualBox and it fail in the past for me even if it support OVF but I didn't recently try with version 6x. As a new dad, "Free time" is precious and I was looking for update procedure in case they were any new way to rebuild my home network. I'll give it another try this weekend.

So far from the review I saw it seem that some are having issue to import VB OVF if they used EFI boot which most of my VMs have. I may need to see if I can find a way to convert it back to bios boot and test it.

FYI, I need to import: Home Assistant VM (Hassio), Linux VMs, Windows 7 (in a secure box for old software), Windows 10 and server 2019.

 

[LnxBil]

Keep in mind that you will have to reactivate your Windows, should not be a problem with the "newer" Windows OSes, but I also had older OSes that could not find any activation servers on the internet.

 

[Rick Wolf]

Keep in mind that you will have to reactivate your Windows, should not be a problem with the "newer" Windows OSes, but I also had older OSes that could not find any activation servers on the internet.

Thanks @LnxBil. Good to know.

 

[allocacoc]

I had a similar problem today: I tried to import a VirtualBox VDI, but the VM didn't boot in any way. I suppose it was due to GPT or UEFI. I added UEFI disk, set BIOS and all, but nothing.

At last, I solved converting VM to OVF from VirtualBox server with:
vboxmanage export VM_Name -o VM_Name.ovf

This generated two files: VM_Name.ovf and VM_Name-disk001.vmdk. I sent both to proxmox server with rsync.

Then, from ProxMox server (110 is a new VM ID):
qm importovf 110 VM_Name.ovf local-zfs

qm threw a warning, because disk was not found. So I had to import it with:
qm importdisk 110 VM_Name-disk001.vmdk local-zfs

After that I manually added disk to VM via ProxMox GUI and set up a network card, which was not imported. VM booted and works fine now.

Hope it helps

 

[Rick Wolf]

I had a similar problem today: I tried to import a VirtualBox VDI, but the VM didn't boot in any way. I suppose it was due to GPT or UEFI. I added UEFI disk, set BIOS and all, but nothing.

At last, I solved converting VM to OVF from VirtualBox server with:
vboxmanage export VM_Name -o VM_Name.ovf

This generated two files: VM_Name.ovf and VM_Name-disk001.vmdk. I sent both to proxmox server with rsync.

Then, from ProxMox server (110 is a new VM ID):
qm importovf 110 VM_Name.ovf local-zfs

qm threw a warning, because disk was not found. So I had to import it with:
qm importdisk 110 VM_Name-disk001.vmdk local-zfs

After that I manually added disk to VM via ProxMox GUI and set up a network card, which was not imported. VM booted and works fine now.

Hope it helps

Thanks for sharing, I'll give a try.

 

[Dominic]

I had a similar problem today: I tried to import a VirtualBox VDI, but the VM didn't boot in any way. I suppose it was due to GPT or UEFI. I added UEFI disk, set BIOS and all, but nothing.

At last, I solved converting VM to OVF from VirtualBox server with:
vboxmanage export VM_Name -o VM_Name.ovf

This generated two files: VM_Name.ovf and VM_Name-disk001.vmdk. I sent both to proxmox server with rsync.

Then, from ProxMox server (110 is a new VM ID):
qm importovf 110 VM_Name.ovf local-zfs

qm threw a warning, because disk was not found. So I had to import it with:
qm importdisk 110 VM_Name-disk001.vmdk local-zfs

After that I manually added disk to VM via ProxMox GUI and set up a network card, which was not imported. VM booted and works fine now.

Hope it helps

Thank you for sharing! Exporting to OVF seems to always be a good idea to me. While network is a known problem, importovf should normally find the disks, so if you stumble upon this problem again, I'd be happy about the exact logs to fix the problem