virtualbox.org

Hello People,

Searching the info in the web-pages, I found two ways to convert a virtual machine from vmware to virtualbox. The first one is by using the ovf tool. The second one is by importing directly the vmdk file. Unfortunately, I am not allowed to paste here the links of the these sources describing the steps of converting the virtual machines.

So, I wonder which one is better? What is the difference? The second one (vmdk option) seems the easier way of doing that. In addition, I use the hard drive of my old and dead laptop as an external storage to move files to my new laptop. It seems that I don't have installed ovf tool also.

Thank you!

Both work, both methods have ups and downs. "Better" would depend on the needs of the guest OS.

Using OVF/OVA requires less expertise, so you should probably go with that. The only problem is that it's a clone of the hardware, not a copy, so all the hardware signatures will change. As I said, whether that's a problem will depend on what your guest OS is, and guest apps too perhaps.

On the other hand, VMWare and VirtualBox are entirely different applications, there's no way to avoid hardware changes completely - in fact there's no guarantee that the VM will run at all, though it usually will.

Make sure you uninstall VMWare tools before exporting the guest.

Thank you for the answer!

The OS of my new laptop is Windows10, while the OS of the old one is Windows 7. The virtual machine I would like to relocate is installed with Fedora 16.

The host OS doesn't really figure in this.

Fedora 16 is probably fine with both methods, so I'd suggest using the easier OVA method.

Thank you very much! I will try it.
Greetings,
svetla

It did not go well. I attached a screen shot. I guess somehow ovf tool did not work properly.

I run the command from the folder ovf tool, which is located in vmware folder (all of them located in the external storage, which was actually the hard disk of my old computer). I wonder is it possible that ovf tool remembers the old path (C:/...) among its files, while now it is E:/... (because of the external storage).

I follow these instructions:
https://www.maketecheasier.com/convert- ... irtualbox/

Are you asking me how to run the ovftool in VMWare? These are the VirtualBox forums, I don't use VMWare.