Last week I started using this great product and I'm in progress of migrating all of my VMs to the new proxmox software.
For this, I used the functionality to import the VMs from ESXi directly.
This works fine for Linux, but for Windows I had some issues to keep the activation working.
At first I thought it was related to 'hardware changes', but some investigation, I was able to pinpoint it to the UUID.
When I manually copy the UUID from the old ESXi environment to the smbios1.uuid, the activation is there to stay and Windows doesn't ask for a new Windows activation.
After my third migration, I noticed that it seems to reverse some parts of the UUID, which makes them different from the original..
This is what I noticed:
UUID after import: 564d595c-4c56-4b10-b8e0-6684d32d0163
UUID from VMware: 5c594d56-564c-104b-b8e0-6684d32d0163
As you can see, they are close, but not identical.. Looking closer you might think they are just 'different', but they are not as different as you might think:
So let's split the UUID up in sections divided by the dashes:
First:
564d595c
5c594d56
If you look closely, they are very similar and it looks like 'sets' have been swapped in the wrong order.
Same counts for other sections, eg.:
Second:
4c56
564c
So it looks like the set of 2 characters are reversed.. E.g. split the word in half and swap their positions..
Third:
4b10
104b
Another set that matches but seems swapped...
Sections four and five are identical..
To me, it doesn't look like coincidence and the intention was to recreate the UUID just like on VMware, but it seems something goes wrong (bug?).
My current version of Proxmox VE: 8.2.4 (installed and updated last week). ESXi version: 8.0.1.
Couldn't find a similar post regarding this issue, so I decided to create a new thread. Sorry if this is duplicate.
For this, I used the functionality to import the VMs from ESXi directly.
This works fine for Linux, but for Windows I had some issues to keep the activation working.
At first I thought it was related to 'hardware changes', but some investigation, I was able to pinpoint it to the UUID.
When I manually copy the UUID from the old ESXi environment to the smbios1.uuid, the activation is there to stay and Windows doesn't ask for a new Windows activation.
After my third migration, I noticed that it seems to reverse some parts of the UUID, which makes them different from the original..
This is what I noticed:
UUID after import: 564d595c-4c56-4b10-b8e0-6684d32d0163
UUID from VMware: 5c594d56-564c-104b-b8e0-6684d32d0163
As you can see, they are close, but not identical.. Looking closer you might think they are just 'different', but they are not as different as you might think:
So let's split the UUID up in sections divided by the dashes:
First:
564d595c
5c594d56
If you look closely, they are very similar and it looks like 'sets' have been swapped in the wrong order.
Same counts for other sections, eg.:
Second:
4c56
564c
So it looks like the set of 2 characters are reversed.. E.g. split the word in half and swap their positions..
Third:
4b10
104b
Another set that matches but seems swapped...
Sections four and five are identical..
To me, it doesn't look like coincidence and the intention was to recreate the UUID just like on VMware, but it seems something goes wrong (bug?).
My current version of Proxmox VE: 8.2.4 (installed and updated last week). ESXi version: 8.0.1.
Couldn't find a similar post regarding this issue, so I decided to create a new thread. Sorry if this is duplicate.
Last edited: