This week, Proxmox VE has a new feature we hoped for a few quarters ago. The team behind Proxmox VE has a new import wizard to help folks migrate from VMware ESXi to Proxmox VE.
New VMware ESXi to Proxmox VE Import Wizard Available
Currently this is only available in the Proxmox VE test and no-subscription repositories as it is an initial release. The tool uses public APIs to pull the virtual machine data and map it to a Proxmox VE environment, but some folks are finding challenges based on their configuration and things like vSAN are not currently supported.
To get the new tools, we did a dist-upgrade on a PVE 8.1 host and the pve-esi-import-tools was there immediately.
We have this running on one of the AMD EPYC 7C13 systems we recently covered. Here, we can see that the update has us at Proxmox VE 8.1.8, which is where we first get access to the new importer. The importer was originally for Proxmox VE 8.2 so this is again early days.
To find the importer, you actually go to Datacenter -> Storage -> Add and there is a new ESXi option.
Here you can add the ESXi as a source. Perhaps the easiest way to think about this is that you are pulling the image from the existing data store.
From there, the Proxmox VE dialog and the documentation make the import process relatively simple, if your configuration (ESXi 6.5-8.0, no vSAN, and so forth) is supported.
Proxomx is working on adding this and we expect it to make its way to other repositories soon.
Final Words
Overall, this is a great development after the Broadcom acquisition of VMware. For example, we discussed how VMware VCSP Customers are Seeing 10x or More Cost Increases Under Broadcom. Some on the STH team have already started VMware exfiltration projects, with many going to Hyper-V because the migration path to Proxmox VE was too difficult and time-consuming. The new importer should help considerably.
If you want to learn more, check out the official migration documentation.
Awesome. Amazing timing as I was going to start moving my homelab to Proxmox this weekend.
“Perhaps the easiest way to think about this is ”
… a fish swimming upstream during a red algae bloom wearing a hoop skirt.
If you aren’t going to finish the sentence, I have to assume that’s where you were going with it.
Thank you Cliff for your insight on new import feature offered by Promox for VMware workloads. It’d be great if you could add step by step process of importing it.
@Nisar.
Though it would be nice to have that info, it seems Proxmox already updated their online documentation and has a fairly decently documented process.
https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Migrate_to_Proxmox_VE (scroll down to “Automatic ESXi Import: Step by Step”).
“Perhaps the easiest way to think about this is ”
… sucking a big turd trough a rainbow-straw while humming Rick Astley – Never gonna give you up
If you aren’t going to finish the sentence, I have to assume that’s where you were going with it.
Combine this with 45Drives’ Proxinator & you have a relatively easy migration path. Great to see the innovation happening.
I’m going to go down this path and could use some advice.
I have a number of hard drives in my tower server that are RDM’ed over to VMs on ESXi7 and I don’t have another server large enough to run Proxmox and house those hard drives. I do have a TMM running Proxmox though and it has enough storage to house the VMs that use those hard drives.
Can I migrate the ESXi VMs to the TMM, never power them up, install Proxmox on the tower server, migrate the now Proxmox VMs back to the tower server, map the hard drives to these VMs and then power them up? Or am I too optimistic in assuming this will work?