Migrate a windows vmware virtual machine to Linux KVM

July 1, 2018 6 minute read

Linux KVM is getting more and more useable for desktop virtualization thanks to the the virtio and QXL/SPICE drivers.

Most Linux distributes have the virtio & QXL drivers you might need to install the spice-vdagent.

On Windows you can download and install the virtio and QXL drivers.

Using the virtio drivers will improve your guest system performance and your virtualization experience.

Convert the disk image

merge the vmware disk images…

If you use split disk images on vmware ( or vmware player ) migrate them to a single disk images with the vmware-vdiskmanager command.

convert the vmdk image to qcow2

Convert the VMDK disk image to qcow2

Import the disk image to KVM

We’ll inport the disk image with virt-install it’s also posible to import the images with virt-manager if you prefer a graphical interface or or just being lazy 🙂

Available os options

To list the supported operation system you can use the osinfo-query os command

import

We need to import the disk image as IDE device since we don’t have the virtio driver in our windows disk image (yet).

Install the virtio drivers and QXL graphics drivers

Get them…

Type of virtio drivers

The following virtio windows drivers are available.

• block (disk drivers)
• network
• baloon ((dynamic memory management)

The fedoraproject provides pre compiled iso images containig all the virtio drivers and installation images for windows XP.

ISO contents

• NetKVM/ — Virtio network driver
• viostor/ — Virtio block driver
• vioscsi/ — Virtio Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) driver
• viorng/ — Virtio RNG driver
• vioser/ — Virtio serial driver
• Balloon/ — Virtio memory balloon driver
• qxl/ — QXL graphics driver for Windows 7 and earlier. (build virtio-win-0.1.103-1 and later)
• qxldod/ — QXL graphics driver for Windows 8 and later. (build virtio-win-0.1.103-2 and later)
• pvpanic/ — QEMU pvpanic device driver (build virtio-win-0.1.103-2 and later)
• guest-agent/ — QEMU Guest Agent 32bit and 64bit MSI installers
• qemupciserial/ — QEMU PCI serial device driver
• *.vfd VFD floppy images for using during install of Windows XP

Download

I use arch linux and download virtio-win AUR package with pacaur. You can download the images directly or use the installation packages for your Linux distribution.

This install virtio images to /usr/share/virtio/

virtio-win.iso is the ISO cdrom image containing all the drivers.

Installation

mount the iso image

Make sure that the cdrom is mounted in windows.

Install

Open Device Manager

Open device Manager in the control panel or type devmgmt.msc on the command prompt.

Update the drivers

• balloon, the balloon driver affects the PCI device
• vioserial, affects the PCI simple communication controler
• NetKVM, the network driver affects the Network adapters.
• viostor, the block driver affects the Disk drives.

Update the PCI drivers

In windows 10 the PCI device and the PCI Simple Communications Controller have the missing driver icon. Right click on the PCI device and select update driver -> click on Browse my computer for driver software Specify the cdrom as the search location and click Next, this will install the Balloon driver.

Do the same for the PCI Simple Communications Controller this will install the “VirtIO Serial Driver”

install the VioStor driver

Add a temporary disk to the virtual machine and use VirtIO as the Bus Type In the Device Manager you’ll get a new device SCSI Controller right click it and update the driver. This will install the Red Hat VirtIO SCSI controller

Go to the device settings of your virtual machine and change the Disk bus to VirtIO and shutdown you virtual machine.

You can remove the temporary disk now or leave it if you can find some use for it…

Make sure that you disk is selected as the bootable device.

Start the virtual machine and make sure that the system is bootable.

install the netKVM driver

Update the Device model to virtio.

Start devmgmt.msc and update the driver as we did before….

And verify that you network card works correctly.

install the QXL graphical driver

Update the Microsoft Basic Display Adapter

After the installation you can change the the display resolution.

If you want to use higher screen resolutions you need to increase the video ram

Have fun!

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Updated: July 1, 2018

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Можно ли использовать виртуальную машину VMware в KVM?

Главный претендент на замену коммерческой системы виртуализации VMware – это гипервизор KVM, который поддерживается современными ядрами Linux. Любой современный дистрибутив Linux в той или иной мере позволит воспользоваться системой виртуализации KVM. Передо мной как-то поставили задачу: можно ли запустить или конвертировать одну гостевую операционную систему из одной системы виртуализации в другую?

В KVM активно используется для построения виртуальной среды такой компонент как QEMU. QEMU умеет работать с файлами vmdk или конвертировать их в свой формат. Файлы vmdk представляют собой виртуальные жёсткие диски виртуальных машин VMware, которые можно напрямую использовать в QEMU НО:

• Поддерживаются только образы VMware 3, 4 и 6 версии.
• В VMware тип виртуального диска должен быть: 0 (single growable virtual disk) или 2 (preallocated virtual disk) или нужно получить из существующего виртуального диска требуемый с помощью vmware-vdiskmanager, что занимает определённое время, зависящее от размера виртуального диска.
• Конвертация конфигурации виртуализированного аппаратного обеспечения из одного формата (*.vmx) в другой в полностью автоматическом режиме невозможна. Требуется постоянный контроль человека и ручные правки.
• Для тех кто использует virt-manager для работы с KVM/QEMU есть инструмент vmware2libvirt, который обладает массой ограничений: находит только первый сетевой интерфейс, первый жёсткий диск, захардкорджено использование 1 CPU, нельзя использовать любые vmware-специфичные вещи для гостя.

Для перехода из одной системы виртуализации в другую настоятельно рекомендуется в гостевых виртуальных машинах с MS Windows Server провести мероприятия:

• Удалить установленные VMware Tools, которые оптимизируют работу виртуальной машины в среде VMware. Перезагрузиться.
• Из-за невозможности точь-в-точь воссоздать эмулируемое аппаратное обеспечение, системы MS Windows болезненно реагируют на смену аппаратуры и Plug-n-Play identifier (PnP-ID). Вполне ожидаемый результат будет Экран Смерти (Blue Screen of Death) с кодом ошибки 0x0000007B. Для избежания проблем рекомендуется для виртуальных машин с MS Windows перейти на использование интерфейса работы с дисками IDE через процедуру описанной на VMware to Proxmox VE (KVM). Перезагрузиться.
• Если переход с VMware на KVM удался, то можно оптимизировать работу MS Windows через установку драйверов virtio.

Вывод.
Все вышеперечисленные ограничения и возможные проблемы, дают право говорить, что полуавтоматическое использование существующих образов-дисков vmdk с установленной внутри MS Windows Server через гипервизор KVM возможен, но носит лабораторный и исследовательский характер. Использование такой гетерогенной системы из разных систем виртуализации на производстве будет очень проблематичным и без каких-либо гарантий в будущем.

Мы лишаемся какой-либо оптимизации и улучшения работы гостевых систем, так как под каждую систему виртуализации существуют свои программные решения, советы. Переход с одной системы на другую просто убивает все решения и советы на корню.

Что нового в бесплатной системе виртуализации Proxmox VE 4 на базе KVM/QEMU ?

Vmware to kvm windows

The vmware system consists of two disks in raw format: the old boot disk and the second one. It is Windows 2000 Server guest OS.

1. Create empty new boot image (use dd).
2. Boot stand alone OS from any other disk with old boot disk and new boot image connected (that is at least 3 disks).
3. Sign up, make partition and format the new disk (do not make volume).
4. xcopy /e /c /r /h /k /o /x /y old_boot_disk:\ new_boot_disk:\
5. Copy boot.ini from new boot disk to the second one (that is not boot disk).
6. Edit boot.ini on the second disk to boot from rdisk(1)
7. Swap disks: new second.
8. Boot setup from CD and go on Repair Procedure (after licence agreement) for the new boot disk.
9. fdisk new boot image and toggle Boot flag.
10. Swap disks back: second new.
11. Boot from the new disk.
12. Remove vmware tools and devices.
13. Reboot and be happy.

P. S. To swap disks and edit boot.ini (items 5,6,7,10) should be excluded if the boot disk is named C:, that is right in most cases. Those items are for strange case, when boot disk is D: and second one is C:.

Starting at v0.12, Qemu-kvm has native support to VMware’s disk images v6 (seems to be compatible with v7, used by VMware Server). So VMware images can could be run with Qemu-kvm without any modification (make backups and do it at your own risks though !).

Look at your VMX configuration file:

• scsi0:0.fileName = «zimbra-000001.vmdk«
• uuid.bios = «56 4d 3f 3d 32 80 5b f2-94 31 21 c9 b2 c3 93 b9«
• ethernet0.generatedAddress = «00:0c:29:c3:93:b9«

And then build the command-line:

The UUID is optional, but might be useful for applications using it for validation (i.e. Windows), and the MAC address as well.

Second way could be to convert the disk image: