Migrating VMWare guest with multiple disks

[leenux_tux]

Hello forum,

I'm in the process of migrating a number of VMWare guests over to PROXMOX. I have been following the process detailed here (https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migration_of_servers_to_Proxmox_VE#VMware_to_Proxmox_VE_.28KVM.29) and, for single disk VM's the process works well.
However, for systems with more than one disk I think the process must be a little different as when I attempt to boot the guest I get a message stating the operating system can not be found. These are all Windows guests.

Here is what I am doing...

1. Boot up the VM in VMware
2. Run mergeide.reg.
3. Remove VMWare tools
4. Shutdown
5. Convert disk "Oracle 10G Testing.vmdk" to "Oracle-10G-Testing-0-pve.vmdk" using vmware-vdiskmanager
6. Convert disk "Oracle 10G Testing_1.vmdk" to "Oracle-10G-Testing-1-pve.vmdk" using vmware-vdiskmanager
7. Create a new VM in PROXMOX with two drives, same RAM, same CPU config as in VMWare. I do not switch on the VM
8. SCP the two converted disk files over to the directory where the new PROXMOX disk files live.
9. ssh over to the PROXMOX machine
10. Use qemu-img to convert the two vmdk's to qcow2.
11. Remove the two disk files that PROXMOX created.
12. Rename the two converted files so that the converted disk1 has the same name as the PROXMOX disk1, do the same for disk2.

Boot up the VM and ........ No operating system found.

I have done exactly the same procedure for single disk VM's and it works great. Any pointers/tips would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks

N

 

[Q-wulf]

I assume your going based on this:
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migration_of_servers_to_Proxmox_VE
if point #11 and #15 do not proof helpfull you could try using point #2 (adding a Clonezilla livecd to your orginial VM, boot that CD, clone that OS and then migrate it to the Proxmox based VM)

 

[leenux_tux]

Thanks for the response.

I have tried the Clonezilla method and it all appeared to work OK, however, when I boot up the VM I just get a message stating "Booting from hard drive". See below.
I have tried booting from the Windows Server CD and doing a "rescue". The rescue tools find the Windows installation and I can log on and list files so the install is there. I'm guessing that (perhaps?) the correct boot flags have not been re-configured by Clonezilla when I restored the diskimages ?

 

[Q-wulf]

This is KVM based, right ? I see multiple ata disks in your screen shot. Any chance you set the boot order wrong ? As in "any chance" you have the boot-loader on "4" and not on "1" where you are booting from ?

You can fix boot order in proxmox by selecting the "VM" -> "options Tab" -> "Boot order"

This might actually be the issue from your previous attempts aswell.

 

[leenux_tux]

Yes, KVM based VM.

The boot order is OK, IDE0, CD-ROM, Network. No mention of IDE1. It's a puzzling one for sure. I have managed to successfully migrate single disk based VM's but can not migrate multi-disk VM's. I'm just about to try another multi-disk VM using the Clonezilla method. Will post back the results.

Thanks for taking the time to respond.

 

[Q-wulf]

Do you have 1 vDisk or 2 vDisks attached to the VM ? Because the Screenshot shows that you have 2 Disks inside the VM. 30 and 50 GB respectively.

 

[leenux_tux]

I have two disks connected.

I tried again on the same VM and the same thing happened. Here is the really strange thing though. The VM I am having problems with was cloned years ago. I have run the same procedure over the clone and it worked (partially) OK. When I say OK, I had a problem with the second disk in that Windows couldn't reactivate the disk, something to do with it being a "dynamic" disk. All I needed to do was convert the disk to a "basic" disk, re-format and copy the files over from the source VM.