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Proxmox VE: Import Wizard for Migrating VMware ESXi VMs

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Re: Proxmox VE: Import Wizard for Migrating VMware ESXi VMs

#91

Post by moondev »

publicmail wrote: post #85
moondev wrote: post #60

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. 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 w…

Do you have any more info on this KVM back end for Virtualbox? I love Virtualbox (I know, I know) but the one annoying thing is the dependency on out of tree kernel modules (at least they’re open source though).

https://github.com/cyberus-technology/virtualbox-kvm

I learned of it via:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39300317

Also interesting: vgpu suport (intel srv-io)

https://cyberus-technology.de/articles/vbox-kvm-sriov

Re: Proxmox VE: Import Wizard for Migrating VMware ESXi VMs

#92

Post by wkat4242 »

technion wrote: post #90
bluedino wrote: post #38

It's the ecosystem. Sure, your organization is spending another million dollars on VMware this year, but what are the options? * Your outsourced VMware-certified experts don't actually know that much about virtualization (somehow) * Your backup software provider is just now researching adding Proxmox support ( https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/22/veeam_proxmox_oracle_... ) * A few years ago you 'reduced storage cos…

I'll agree in theory but to play devil's advocate: * I did the VCP4 and 5 courses. It's entirely a sales certification. I mean it's a technical certification, but I've never run into anyone who certified for the purpose of running an organisation's tech. Rather, you certify for the purpose of your company being able to sell the product. Note also much of VMware's training focus lately has been on things outside their…

Their MDM product was airwatch which was pretty amazing until VMware bought it and stopped developing core features in favour of cruft nobody wanted like vdi integration.

Now airwatch is surpassed even by Intune.

Re: Proxmox VE: Import Wizard for Migrating VMware ESXi VMs

#93

Post by greggsy »

moondev wrote: post #77
mrpippy wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note that macOS guest support ended with ESXi 7.0: https://kb.vmware.com/s/article/88698 Running macOS is only supported/licensing-compliant on Apple-branded hardware anyway, and with the supported Intel Macs getting pretty old this was inevitable anyway.

Mac mini 2018 is still the best Mac for vms 6 cores 12 threads 64GB DDR nvme 4 thunderbolt3 ports for pci expansion 10GbE onboard nic boots ESXi boots Proxmox boots or virtualizes windows boots or virtualizes linux boots or virtualizes macos iGPU passthrough Supports nested virt

If you’re just running a bare metal hypervisor then you may as well just go for a second hand tiny form factor platform. No point paying 15-20% extra for the same specs in a svelte case if you’re not running native macOS.

Re: Proxmox VE: Import Wizard for Migrating VMware ESXi VMs

#94

Post by LilBytes »

dusanh wrote: post #69
Helmut10001 wrote: post #40

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.

Unprivileged LXCs? Interesting, I thought containers would require privileged LXC. At least, that it my takeaway from trying to run Podman in a nesting enabled, but unprivileged LXC under non-root user. I kept running into > newuidmap: write to uid_map failed: Operation not permitted I tried googling it, tried some of the solutions, but reached the conclusion that it's happening because the LXC is not privileged.

Have to map GUID and UIDs from the Proxmox host to the LxC to allow bind mappings work as an example.

Proxmox doco for unprivileged LxC is here: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Unprivileged_LXC_containers

Re: Proxmox VE: Import Wizard for Migrating VMware ESXi VMs

#95

Post by wutwutwat »

matthew-wegner wrote: post #21

I'm in game development, and I run ESXi for two reasons: * Unmodified macOS guest VMs can run under ESXi (if you're reading this on macOS, you have an Apple-made VMXNet3 network adapter driver on your system--see /System/Library/Extensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleVmxnet3Ethernet.kext ) * Accelerated 3D has reasonable guest support, even as pure software. You wouldn't want to work in one of those…

I run macOS/OSX Sonoma in Proxmox. It does pcie/gpu passthrough (AMD rx580 8gb). The proxmox host is running a AMD Ryzen 7 5700G cpu and has 64gb memory. The mac vm disks are on a zfs fs on a wd black nvme ssd.

It's the fastest mac I've ever owned and it's virtual, executed on a machine running a chip that apple never supported, and you'd never be able to tell it was a vm unless you were told so. kvm and vfio are amazing pieces of software.

A good place to start: https://github.com/luchina-gabriel/OSX-PROXMOX

Re: Proxmox VE: Import Wizard for Migrating VMware ESXi VMs

#96

Post by moondev »

greggsy wrote: post #93
moondev wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Mac mini 2018 is still the best Mac for vms 6 cores 12 threads 64GB DDR nvme 4 thunderbolt3 ports for pci expansion 10GbE onboard nic boots ESXi boots Proxmox boots or virtualizes windows boots or virtualizes linux boots or virtualizes macos iGPU passthrough Supports nested virt

If you’re just running a bare metal hypervisor then you may as well just go for a second hand tiny form factor platform. No point paying 15-20% extra for the same specs in a svelte case if you’re not running native macOS.

> No point paying 15-20% extra for the same specs in a svelte case if you’re not running native macOS.

The main point is proper non-hackintosh support for running (unlimited amount) of macOS vms on esxi - which requires Apple hardware. Running macOS, Windows and Linux on the metal is another benefit. IMO it's almost as versatile as a framework chromebook (chromeos, crostini, kvm, android with play store)

Re: Proxmox VE: Import Wizard for Migrating VMware ESXi VMs

#97

Post by Helmut10001 »

dusanh wrote: post #69
Helmut10001 wrote: post #40

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.

Unprivileged LXCs? Interesting, I thought containers would require privileged LXC. At least, that it my takeaway from trying to run Podman in a nesting enabled, but unprivileged LXC under non-root user. I kept running into > newuidmap: write to uid_map failed: Operation not permitted I tried googling it, tried some of the solutions, but reached the conclusion that it's happening because the LXC is not privileged.

I once wrote a post about Docker in unprivileged LXC on ZFS [1]. The post is a little bit outdated, as it is much simpler today with ZFS 2.2.0, which is natively supported. There's also a more recent post that shows how to run rootless docker [2], with updated uid-mappings. Both may be helpful, have a look.

The advantage of using LXC for me is resource consumption and separation of concerns. I have about 35 Docker containers spread over 10 LXCs. The average CPU use is 1-3% and I only need about 10GB of memory (even with running bigger containers like Nextcloud, Gitlab, mailcow-dockerized etc.). With docker-compose.yml's, automatic updates are easy and robust.

[1]: https://du.nkel.dev/blog/2021-03-25_proxmox_docker/

[2]: https://du.nkel.dev/blog/2023-12-12_mastodon-docker-rootless...

Re: Proxmox VE: Import Wizard for Migrating VMware ESXi VMs

#98

Post by prmoustache »

rwmj wrote: post #22
bityard wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of the most popular Linux distros tend have the virtio drivers installed by default.

Not in the initramfs which is rather important if you want them to boot without having to use slow emulated IDE. Then there's Windows guests.

It have been years since I used windows VMs, can't you install .inf driver's file beforehand?

Re: Proxmox VE: Import Wizard for Migrating VMware ESXi VMs

#100

Post by rfoo »

wutwutwat wrote: post #95
matthew-wegner wrote: post #21

I'm in game development, and I run ESXi for two reasons: * Unmodified macOS guest VMs can run under ESXi (if you're reading this on macOS, you have an Apple-made VMXNet3 network adapter driver on your system--see /System/Library/Extensions/IONetworkingFamily.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleVmxnet3Ethernet.kext ) * Accelerated 3D has reasonable guest support, even as pure software. You wouldn't want to work in one of those…

I run macOS/OSX Sonoma in Proxmox. It does pcie/gpu passthrough (AMD rx580 8gb). The proxmox host is running a AMD Ryzen 7 5700G cpu and has 64gb memory. The mac vm disks are on a zfs fs on a wd black nvme ssd. It's the fastest mac I've ever owned and it's virtual, executed on a machine running a chip that apple never supported, and you'd never be able to tell it was a vm unless you were told so. kvm and vfio are ama…

> zfs fs on a wd black nvme ssd

Why? IIRC running ZFS on NVMe SSDs limit their performance seriously. With sufficient queue depth modern SSDs can easily get up to 1mln+ IOPS and on ZFS I can barely get 100k :(

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