OLD RHEL5 ESXi VM wont boot after import from ESXi 6.7

[Marshall Mims]

Hi all, new Proxmox user here. Migrated to ProxMox this weekend after purchasing a new server and realizing Broadcom had screwed us over with our perpetual ESXi Licensing.

For the most part went easy, the import tool is awesome, learned a lot (mainly install VirtIO drivers in windows BEFORE you migrate haha)

We have an old ERP running on RHEL5, and although its not in prod anymore, we still need it for historical data.

For a stopgap measure to get us off the old hardware, i installed ESXi as a VM inside Proxmox, and migrated that our RHEL VM to the ESXi VM inside Proxmox. This is working fine, so we are functional.

When i migrate the VM to Proxmox and tried to boot, it gives errors in the screenshots attached. It gets to GRUB and tries to boot then crashes with a kernel panic.

The storage inside the vm has been added to multiple times over the years and was grown (with the help of Eclipse support, which we no longer have access to)

the virtio hard drive was something i learned to add to inside the windows vms to let them load drivers for the virtio devices before i swapped the Bus/Device on the main disks to VirtIO from sata/ide/scsi.

i have tried changing the drives from scsi to sata and to ide, with no change.

I would like to get it running in proxmox native though.

Any advice would be appreciated.

See attached photos.

 

[LnxBil]

It does not find the root device. This could be due to a lot of things. Can you try to set the scsi controler to VMware PVSCSI? That may already solve your problem. If not, please check this post.

 

[Marshall Mims]

It does not find the root device. This could be due to a lot of things. Can you try to set the scsi controler to VMware PVSCSI? That may already solve your problem. If not, please check this post.

was working through this, then hit a brick wall. yum install qemu-guest-agent fails. "no package qemu-guest-agent available"

i'm guessing its because of the age of the VM.

i was able to uninstall vmware tools though. too bad now i dont have a mouse inside my VM haha.

i'm trying to find a source to download/install them but not having much luck.

 

[Marshall Mims]

the oldest rpm i could find was for el6/centos6 and tried to install it, but wrong architecture. it may have to live out its life in vmware.

 

[tcabernoch]

Man that's some rough times. Welcome to the free side.
Here. You need to watch this. Very carefully. They released this video along with the ESXi import tool.
I believe there's info here that isn't gathered anywhere else. Do watch it.

https://www.proxmox.com/en/services/videos/proxmox-virtual-environment/proxmox-ve-import-wizard-for-vmware

 

[LnxBil]

i was able to uninstall vmware tools though. too bad now i dont have a mouse inside my VM haha.

i'm trying to find a source to download/install them but not having much luck.

Backup or snapshot would be handy, yet the guest tools are not that important. They don't contain drivers.

 

[Marshall Mims]

Backup or snapshot would be handy, yet the guest tools are not that important. They don't contain d

Backup or snapshot would be handy, yet the guest tools are not that important. They don't contain drivers.

yeah i had both, and restored to get the VM back to where it was in ESXi. I appreciate the help folks, i think i'm just gonna leave this one running inside esxi as a guest inside proxmox. thankfully its non-critical.

just realized this VM is old enough to drive hahahah

 

[Magnus-mercer]

If you need to migrate a virtual machine, you can use Vinchin Backup & Recovery, such as migrating from VMware to Proxmox. The operation is simple and the transfer process is safe.