Notes on migrating VMs from VMware to Proxmox

Notes on VM importing#

Before migrating, it’s recommended to remove all VM snapshots. Then proceed.
On centos/rocky/redhat hosts run commands:

yum install qemu-guest-agent
dracut --force --add-drivers "virtio_balloon virtio_scsi virtio_console virtio_net virtio_pci"

Then shutdown the machine and scp the vmdk disks:

scp from esxi to local both machine.vmdk and machine-flat.vmdk

create similar machine in proxmox and remember machine id:

qm importdisk 103 machine.vmdk ceph-noc --format qcow2   ##**replace 103 with machine id**

Note: Some machines have non similar disk names. In that case go to vsphere, and in vm settings you can see which disk is attached to the vm.

go to options, detach drive, choose sata as type then attach drive
go to hardware choose disk as boot option
start machine
then you might wanna add the vm to HA, go to “more” on the top menu, and click “manage HA”.

Notes on rocky linux 9#

In VM hardware option you have to choose “host” as processor type otherwise you get a kernel panic.

side notes#

if you forget to add the drivers before migration, you can boot into rescue mode then run the command:

dracut --force --add-drivers "virtio_balloon virtio_scsi virtio_console virtio_net virtio_pci" kernel <your-kernel-version-like-5.10.9-126.el9.x86_64> 

running a ls /lib/modules should list the available kernels, choose the most recent.