Physical Windows server 2022 to VM on Proxmox 9

[JAZZIT Support]

I am trying to migrate a physical windows test server to Proxmox.



These are the steps so far:

1. used Disk2vhd and created a vhd file on a USB Drive.

2. Connected the USB to a Ubuntu machine and ran qemu-img convert -p -f vpc -O qcow2 WIN-4GSGQMJ1U8A.VHD WIN-4GSGQMJ1U8A.qcow2



So, I now have a WIN-4GSGQMJ1U8A.qcow2 that needs to be uploaded to the Proxmox server..

All the on-line instructions I have found talk about uploading to:

/var/lib/vz/harddrives/ <- does not exist

Or

/var/lib/vz/images/ <- empty even though there are other vms on the Proxmox server.



Here is the config for a test Linux machine on the box so I can find the drives.



> root@pve001://# qm config 100

bios: ovmf
boot: order=scsi0;ide2;net0
cores: 4
cpu: x86-64-v2-AES
efidisk0: local-lvm:vm-100-disk-0,efitype=4m,pre-enrolled-keys=1,size=4M
ide2: local:iso/AlmaLinux-9.5-x86_64-minimal.iso,media=cdrom,size=2026M
memory: 4000
meta: creation-qemu=10.0.2,ctime=1760887586
name: testalma
net0: virtio=BC:24:11:1D:FF:CA,bridge=vmbr0,firewall=1
numa: 0
ostype: l26
scsi0: local-lvm:vm-100-disk-1,iothread=1,size=32G
scsihw: virtio-scsi-single
smbios1: uuid=faa74c38-b75e-45ed-8f8f-a01c8fc5b808
sockets: 1
vmgenid: 19ec72c9-011b-4336-8cc3-d5c756507a93existing vm on the server:

Question Where do I upload the .qcow2 file to so that it can be used for the migrated VM?

Many thanks inadvance

 

[FrankList80]

P2V Migration / Apologies for not answering directly - i would try the "Boot Clonezilla"-Approach on both the tin and the virtual one - Clonezilla has a small inbuilt-over-LAN capability which works reasonably fine (beware of saturating the network) - this usually works for me with Linux-VMs ...

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[Virtualization Support for SME and NGOs | DLI Solutions ]

 

[JAZZIT Support]

P2V Migration / Apologies for not answering directly - i would try the "Boot Clonezilla"-Approach on both the tin and the virtual one - Clonezilla has a small inbuilt-over-LAN capability which works reasonably fine (beware of saturating the network) - this usually works for me with Linux-VMs ...

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[Virtualization Support for SME and NGOs | DLI Solutions ]

Thankyou for you reply. But the machines re not on the same network.

 

[gmaoret]

1 - Back up with Veeam Backup & Replication Community Edition

2 - Still using Veeam B&R: restore to ProxMox

3 - Optimize the new VM's settings in ProxMox (install and configure VirtIO drivers, optimize sockets and CPU cores, etc.)

That's it (and perhaps the easiest way...)

 

[JAZZIT Support]

Ok. Thanks to more searching I found the step I was missing from this invaluable site:

https://www.vinchin.com/vm-backup/import-qcow2-proxmox.html

Follows these instructions and all works ... almost... But I will create a sperate Post

 

[Johannes S]

You don't need Veeam, Vinchin or any backup tool for that, the feature is already in ProxmoxVE:

Go to your storage configuration in ProxmoxVE, e.G. local (but any other file-based storage should also work, e.G CephFS, NFS or CIFS share on a NAS) and click Edit:



In the next popup add "import" to the allowed Content types and verify that it was enabled in the storage settings:





Afterwards navigate to this storage and select the Import tab, you should be able to use the Upload box to add your qcow file:



Afterwards you can import it to any VM you like.
Imho the backup software vendors fear that PBS might eat their lunch (due to it's way superior integration into the ProxmoxVE ecosystem) so they introduced this "migration features" which are actually not needed at all. In case of Windows you still need to adapt the driver and hardware settings, even with them. For Linux or BSD they are even more pointless since these systems are less picky about "changed hardware configurations" (due to not needing activation).

 

[fba]

Thankyou for you reply. But the machines re not on the same network.

Clonezilla can do backups to a local storage, like USB disk too.