Proxmox VE: Import Wizard for Migrating VMware ESXi VMs

I&#x27;m in game development, and I run ESXi for two reasons:<p>* Unmodified macOS guest VMs can run under ESXi (if you&#x27;re reading this on macOS, you have an Apple-made VMXNet3 network adapter driver on your system--see &#x2F;System&#x2F;Library&#x2F;Extensions&#x2F;IONetworkingFamily.kext&#x2F;Contents&#x2F;PlugIns&#x2F;AppleVmxnet3Ethernet.kext )<p>* Accelerated 3D has reasonable guest support, even as pure software. You wouldn&#x27;t want to work in one of those guest VMs, but for any sort of build agent it should be fine, including opening i.e. Unity editor itself in-VM to diagnose something<p>Does anyone know where either of these things stand with Proxmox today?<p>I imagine macOS VM under Proxmox is basically a hackintosh with i.e. OpenCore as bootloader?

It&#x27;s the ecosystem.<p>Sure, your organization is spending another million dollars on VMware this year, but what are the options?<p>* Your outsourced VMware-certified experts don&#x27;t actually know that much about virtualization (somehow)<p>* Your backup software provider is just now researching adding Proxmox support (<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theregister.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;01&#x2F;22&#x2F;veeam_proxmox_oracle_support&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.theregister.com&#x2F;2024&#x2F;01&#x2F;22&#x2F;veeam_proxmox_oracle_...</a>)<p>* A few years ago you &#x27;reduced storage cost and complexity&#x27; by moving to VMware vSAN, now you have a SAN purchase and data migration on your task list<p>* The hybrid cloud solution that was implemented isn&#x27;t compatible with Proxmox<p>* The ServiceNow integration for VMware works great and is saving you tons of time and money. You want to give that up?<p>* Can you live without logging, reporting, and dashboards until your team gets some free time?

I use Proxmox since 5 years at home. Mostly docker nested in unprivileged LXCs on ZFS for performance reasons. I love the reliability. Proxmox has never lost me. They churn out constant progress without making too much noise. No buzzwords, no advertising, just a good reliable product that keeps getting better.

Very swift move by Proxmox. For context, VMware recently increased their prices as much as 1200% for some customers.

Important because VMWare&#x27;s been acquired by Broadcom (November 22, 2023) and Broadcom&#x27;s been turning the screws on customers to get more money. Many folks are looking for alternatives. More context:<p>2024&#x2F;02&#x2F;26 Can confirm a current Broadcom VMware customer went from $8M renewal to $100M <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39509506">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39509506</a><p>2024&#x2F;02&#x2F;13 VMware vSphere ESXi free edition is dead <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39359534">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39359534</a><p>2024&#x2F;01&#x2F;18 VMware End of Availability of perpetual licensing and associated products <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39048120">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=39048120</a><p>2024&#x2F;01&#x2F;15 Order&#x2F;license chaos for VMware products after Broadcom takeover <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38998615">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38998615</a><p>2023&#x2F;12&#x2F;12 VMware transition to subscription, end of sale of perpetual license <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38615315">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;news.ycombinator.com&#x2F;item?id=38615315</a>

I really hope the crazy prize increase of vmware products will end the use of esxi and the rest of the vsphere suite, it is one of the worst applications and apis i have ever had the displeasure of working with!

I spent 15 years managing a VMware-centric data center. I ran the free version at home for at least 5 years. When I ran out of vCPUs on my free license I switched to Proxmox and the migration was almost painless. This new tool should help even more.<p>For most vanilla hosting, you could get away with Proxmox and be just fine. I&#x27;ve been running it for at least 5 years in my basement and haven&#x27;t had a single hiccup. I bet a lot of VMware customers will be jumping ship when their licenses expire.

I did this recently and it was honestly a walk in the park. Was quite pleasantly surprised when all my vm&#x27;s just booted up and resumed work as normal. The only thing I was worried about was the mac addresses used for dedicated dhcp leases, but all of that &quot;just worked&quot; too!

If proxmox supported OVA and OVF it would be huge. It seems technically possible as there is a new experimental kvm backend for virtual box which supports OVA.<p>At the end of the day OVA is just machine metadata packaged as XML with all required VM artifacts, there is also some cool things like supporting launch variables. Leveraging the format would bring a bunch of momentum considering all the existing OVAs in the wild

I am researching whether to buy puts on AVGO (Broadcom, owner of VMware) since I believe their Vmware revenue will crater in 12 months or so. They took on 32 billion in debt to buy VMW also, which will tank their stock price, I think.

Proxmox striking whilst the iron is still hot. Impressive.

For the sake of completeness, xcp-ng is an alternative to migrate VMware ESXi VMs too!

No mentions yet in the comments re the widespread VMware breakin&#x2F;ransomware epidemic of recent times as the reason to move. I hope there are many people motivated by that and not just the price increases.

Does this do the hard bit, ie installing virtio drivers during conversion?

Does anyone have a good _basic_ guide on LVM&#x2F;LVM Thin? I&#x27;m having a hard time wrapping my head around LVM and moving the vmdk to it. Mainly a Window admin with some Linux experience.<p>I understand that LVM holds data in it but when I make a Windows VM in proxmox it stores the data in a LVM partition(?) as opposed to ESXi or Hyper-V making a VHD or VMDK.<p>Kinda confusing .

Anyone try to replace vsphere with the high-availabilty add-on to RHEL?

Proxmox is great! I just wish that they had a better initial plan, plans start at €1020.

I have been running proxmox at home for a few months now.<p>It has been, to say the least, an adventure. And I have nothing but good things to say about Proxmox at this point. Its running not only my home related items (MQTT, Homeassitant), it also plays host to some of the projects I&#x27;m working on (postgres, go apps, etc...) rather than runing some sort of local dev.<p>If you need to exit vmware, proxmox seems like a good way to go.