Migrating from Hyper-V to VirtualBox

[c4keislie]

Good morning,

I recently purchased a new server. My old server is running Windows Server 2012 R2 and is using Hyper-V as the hypervisor. I have installed OpenSUSE 15.5 Running VirtualBox 7.0 on the new server. I am trying to migrate my VM's over to the new system. Currently, the windows hosts I have tried worked flawlessly with no problems. However, I have tried to migrate a Debian 11 host over to virtualbox and I cannot get it to boot successfully. I get the "No bootable option or Device was found". I have tried using SATA, IDE, SCSI controllers both with and without EFI. Does anyone have any tips or advice on how to get this booting? I will try and get one of my other linux systems migrated to see if it is a linux issue or just debian.

Thanks.

[scottgus1]

I have tried to migrate a Debian 11 host over to virtualbox and I cannot get it to boot successfully. I get the "No bootable option or Device was found".

If the VM's disk files were in the VM folder next to the VM's ,vbox file, and you copied the whole VM folder to the new server, and register the VM's .vbox file with the main Virtualbox window, then the whole VM would be migrated successfully. How did you migrate the VM?

[mpack]

Please note that "host" refers to a physical PC. It seems clear that you are migrating guests, not hosts.

I also want to know how the VM was migrated, however since they are being migrated from Hyper-v there will be no VDI or .vbox files. So how exactly was it done? Does Hyper-v support OVA export, or did you just try to recreate the VM around a VHDX disk image?

If recreating a VM you need to be very careful to get the exact same "motherboard" settings, otherwise things are going to get quite difficult.

[scottgus1]

since they are being migrated from Hyper-v there will be no VDI or .vbox files.

Facepalm. Of course! they're not Virtualbox VMs... Disregard my post, but please do tell us how you migrated the VMs. Eagle eye award goes to Mpack!

[c4keislie]

Update: My linux mint guest works fine so I have to assume this is Debian related. Since this is a non-critical application I will probably end up building from scratch.

For the "Migration" process I just converted the VHDX files to VHD, then created as similar a profile in virtual box as I had in Hyper-V and attached the virtual disk. This seems to work for the most part.

[mpack]

For the "Migration" process I just converted the VHDX files to VHD

Bad move. VHD is a terrible format, slow and error prone. The correct move would have been to convert to VDI.

[scottgus1]

I wonder, if Hyper-V was the converter used, if Hyper-V can convert to VDI?

c4keislie, use Mpack's CloneVDI for the easiest way to convert your VHDs to VDI's. Then attach the .VDIs to the VMs in place of the VHDs.