Migrate from vmware Fusion to Virtualbox

[mrkuuk]

HI!

why cant i find any good info on ze internetz on how to move from fusion to virtualbox?! it is so easy to move from workstation but a !€"%#& from fusion.

no i have to use vmware converter to convert it to workstation 6x version so i can get .vmdk files. but it is really a lot of steps, since i have to first extraxt the files from .vmware file to a windows fileshare and then convert the files.

is there not a better way?

[mpack]

I'm not familiar with VMWare Fusion (I use VirtualBox!), but running Disk2VHD from inside the VM would appear to be simplest.

[ChipMcK]

Remeber to uninstall the vmware tools package before running the converter Disk2VHD

[mrkuuk]

the real problem is that the user at my company that wants to migrate cant even start fusion since he now runs mountain lion... so i'm trying to do the same steps as he needs to... we can say that we just have access to the vmdks...

i tried with my win8 and just copied the vmdk, added it to virtual box manager, create new machine.. works perfect.
with win7 the VM jut reeboots....

i really don't wanna pay vmware licenses for 20 Mac computers every year

[mpack]

I'm afraid that if the disk images are not in one of the supported formats mentioned in the VirtualBox User Manual then there is nothing we can do to help, except sympathise.

[mrkuuk]

but there must be a way to convert vmdk to supported format? funny is that vmdk is supported....

[mpack]

Your original post said that the disk images were not in VMDK format. If they are in VMDK format then conversion is unnecessary since VMDK is supported.

[SvenTheGrinch]

I tried to do a migration myself, and ran into trouble. While trying to get through the issues I ran across this article and figured I share my findings in case they may help someone else.

I started with the usual ovf conversion like this:

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/Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/VMware\ OVF\ Tool/ovftool --acceptAllEulas ~/Documents/Virtual\ Machines.localized/Windows7.vmwarevm/Windows7.vmx windows7.ovf

That produced the relevant files (definition file plus one single vmdk file).

However, when I tried to import that (File | Import Appliance...) I got a checksum error from the manifest file. I searched for a solution on that, and it was suggested to just remove the file. After doing that I was able to get past that problem (and in the end the VM was fine, so this seems like it's an ok thing to do... the checksums actually matched). On a side note... it would be nice if the dialogs for importing and machine setup had a Cancel button (don't see one on Mac). Without it the only way to get out of a started/stuck setup session was a "Force Quit"... not very elegant.

So then the machine almost imported, but failed with an error that the SCSI controller was not found (sorry... don't have the exact error anymore... it was late . The only way I could find to get past that was to manually edit the ovf file and removing the SCSI controller. Once you do that you also want to remove the disk and the entry that connects the disk to the controller (don't worry, it's pretty straight forward XML in that file).

Not too surprisingly, the machine imported fine now. No disk of course as we removed that, but at least I have a machine now that matches my VMWare configuration.

Next step was to try and add the vmdk manually as an IDE device. After doing that the machine would error out upon boot. Something about UUIDs not matching. That seemed to be a remnant of the failed original import, so I went ahead and removed the disk in the "File | Virtual Media Manager" dialog. After that I got it to go a tiny little bit further, just to report that the format of the volume was corrupt.

I went ahead and remove that vmdk file from VirtualBox again, and also removed it from the disk. After that I used (in the folder created by the import (~/VirtualBox\ VMs)

Code: Select all

/Applications/VMware\ Fusion.app/Contents/Library/vmware-vdiskmanager -r ~/Documents/Virtual\ Machines.localized/Windows7.vmwarevm/Windows7.vmdk -t 0 windows7-disk1.vmdk

After adding this new disk in VirtualBox as a IDE drive using the IDE Controller (PIIX4 with Host I/O Cache enabled) and Enable I/O APCI enabled in "Settings | System | Motherboard" the machine came up clean.

Removed the VMWare tools, installed the VirtualBox Additions and voila... a working Windows migration.

Hope this helps someone with similar problems... otherwise this was just a fun exercise in documenting my steps .

Thanks,
Sven

[noteirak]

Thank you for registrering and sharing your experience, I am sure this will be a valuable piece of information!