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I'm trying to move an old Win2008 server from KVM to VMware ESXi 6.7. I realize the Win2008 VM is old and beyond EoS but need to keep this in place for now and is in a VLAN that is not internet accessible.

I tried to follow recommendations from Convert qcow2 to vmdk and make it ESXi 6.0 Compatible and steps I found on the web:

  • Shutdown VM on KVM
  • qemu-img convert -p -f qcow2 -O vmdk win2008.qcow2 win2008.vmdk using qemu v4.2.1
  • vmkfstools -i win2008.vmdk -d thin win2008_v2.vmdk on the VMware host
  • Attach the newly created win2008_v2.vmdk file to a newly created guest with default settings

However I'm stuck with a Windows Error Recovery: Windows failed to start. A recent hardware or software change might be the cause. screen at boot up.

I tried to use some conversion options like qemu-img convert -p -f qcow2 -O vmdk -o adapter_type=lsilogic,subformat=streamOptimized,compat6 win2008.qcow2 win2008.vmdk and tried moving between the 3 available scsi controllers (LSI Logic SAS, LSI Logic Parallel, VMware Paravirtual) to no avail.

When I boot the guest in Safe mode, I see a bunch of sys files get loaded properly until it's stuck after Loaded: \Windows\system32\drivers\crcdisk.sys.

Does anyone have an idea on how to move this guest properly? Any other conversion options to try? Driver install on the running guest (in KVM) first?

Note I'm not running vCenter.

SaeX
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1 Answers1

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Do you try to use VMware Converter Tool ? I think that is the easy way to move your server to VMware. You can download the tool it is free. https://www.vmware.com/products/converter.html

JMHerrer
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  • Thanks for the hint. I had a look at VMware converter, but it looks like this requires vCenter to be installed. In "Destination System" I can pick either `VMware Infrastructure virtual machine`, which requires server/username/password or `VMware Workstation or other VMware virtual machine`, which provides Workstation/Fusion/Player options only. In the first case, I assume SSH won't do. And in the second case, ESXi is not listed. – SaeX Feb 24 '21 at 08:00
  • Hello, sorry for late response, if you have an ESXI you should select the first option, add ip, root and password, accept certificate and start migrating vms. Converter not require a vcenter running. – JMHerrer Feb 27 '21 at 14:31
  • Many thanks, I tried and it worked fine. It took an incredibly long time over a 1Gbps network to have the migration done: at 3.5Mbps it took 10 hours. The new system booted without issues; I had to re-set the network details in Windows since a new NIC was found. – SaeX Mar 01 '21 at 07:42