Install Win 11 Pro and Home Assistant

[mrochette01]

Hello,

I'm new to Promox. My intention is to install a virtual environment for Home Assistant and another with Win 11 Pro.

My question is as follows:
- For the Win 11 Pro installation, I already have a complete Win11 Pro environment that I have configured according to my needs, all natively on a NUC. Instead of starting my Win 11 Pro installation all over again, is it possible to copy the Win 11 Pro environment directly into one of Promox's virtual environments?

Michel

 

[gfngfn256]

Short answer: yes. How? There are are a number of possibilities & I'll only give you a short outline (you can search the web for more info).

There are basically 3 ways to accomplish this.

1. Create a new Win11 VM in Proxmox & then attach the old drive (from NUC) to the PVE server & attach that drive to the VM. (I'm against this route because it is better to leave the existing working Win11 as is).

2. Create a new Win11 VM in Proxmox & then use a software (disk2vhd) on the Windows 11 NUC to create a virtual disk from the existing disk, then transfer this new virtual disk to the Proxmox server, & then convert/add this virtual disk to the Win11 VM.

3. Create a new Win11 VM in Proxmox & then boot the Windows 11 NUC from a live-Linux media & dd the existing disk to an image file which you will need to save (external storage on the NUC) & then transfer that image to the Proxmox server, where you will import/add that image file to the Win11 VM.

All options need quite a bit of tinkering, but are definitely doable. You may face some hurdles along the way, VM config tinkering etc. You will need to consider the existing Windows setup, such as the authorization (which will be lost in the VM), TPM management, & Bitlocker issues (if you are using that on your Windows 11 NUC). There may/will be others.

Consider this one a healthy learning experience to the PVE system.

Good luck.

 

[_gabriel]

don't forget PVE is designed to be headless, you need another computer to use your Windows over RDP.

 

[mrochette01]

Thanks for the advice, instinctively, I would choose option 2 by modulating it as follows:

1 - Buy another 1 TB M.2 disk
2 - Create a virtual disk from my current Win 11 PRO installation that is found on the NUC
3 - Replace the current M.2 disk (without erasing it) with a new 1 TB M.2 disk
4 - Install Promox on the NUC using the new M.2 disk
5 - Create a first virtual machine under Promox and load it with the content (#2, Win 11 PRO)
6 - Create another virtual machine and install Home Assistant (HA) on it

What do you think?

 

[gfngfn256]

Assuming both disks are 1TB - this will not work as is. Your Win11 VM's virtual disk itself will require 1TB.
I personally don't use disk2vhd, but use dd as an image (option 3 above). What I do is to shrink down that image before I start. It takes some effort & is complicated but is possible (sometimes!). You could probably do this with the disk2vhd too, but I have no experience with it. You could also try cloning the current Win 11 disk to a smaller one - search online for this, & then dd/disk2vhd image the new one. As I said above - whatever you do I would not touch the original working Win11 disk - at least not right now.

What I would probably do in your case, is use a new 2TB drive for Proxmox, so you will have enough space anyway. You can still later on shrink that virtual disk anyway.

 

[wahmed]

You could also use CloneZilla to clone your physical Win 11 Pro and restoring it on Proxmox.
using VMware Workstation Converter is another option to convert a physical machine to a VM. The slightly older version of the converter probably still kicking around on the net and works in most scenarios.