ESXi to unRAID best practices?

[thany]

TLDR: how do I migrate from ESXi to unRAID?

 

I'm currently running ESXi 5.1, but it's a monster to maintain and I generally hate the whole locked down and custom everything. unRAID seems a better choice in that it's linux based, uses opensource stuff, the works.

 

So, my ESXi is as simple as it gets. One server with (currently) two VMs: one is Linux and the other is Windows.

My unRAID server will be fairly simple as well: I'm going to do softraid with 3 SSD's, and I'm going to run these two VMs just as happily on one server.

 

My biggest concern is what's the best way to get the two VMs to run on unRAID?

 

Do I need to convert the VMDK files to anything to get them to work? And then can I somehow upload the (new) images to the new server? Is there a tool to convert the VMX files (VM definitions, if you will) to something that unRAID understands, or is it better to recreate them manually? And if so, what are the best choices in term of virtualized hardware for the VMs?

 

Yes, I've searched for this on the forums. Strangely, all it came up with are posts about unRAID as a guest inside ESX, or stranger still, running ESX inside unRAID. Madness. But my case is much simpler it seems.

 

Remember: my environment is pretty much as simple as it gets. If you have a question about complexity, the answer is probably biased towards the simpler end of the spectrum

 

So, any advice?

[chip]

I was able to move my ESXI VMs to unraid.

 

Google Convert VMWare to KVM on unRAID sorry I am not able to paste a link at the moment.

 

[thany]

Please elaborate?

 

Even *if* I'm able to convert them to KVM, that's only one-thirds of the way.

 

*If* the conversion works, I still need:

1) How to upload them into unRAID?

2) How to choose VM options? Virtualized HW is usually different, so which choices are best/safest?

[chip]

I followed a youtube video called - Pre built Win10 VM and Convert VMWare to KVM on unRAID

This video shows you how to move it from esxi and import it into unraid.

 

Hardware will depend on what you need. My VMs are basic and don't do any passthrough.

[thany]

I followed the video, bu I keep getting STOP 0x0000007B when I try to boot my XP VM.

 

I've tried all legal combinations of system type and harddisk bus.

What's next?

[JonathanM]

I followed the video, bu I keep getting STOP 0x0000007B when I try to boot my XP VM.

7B means the driver for the disk controller is not installed, but I think you know that based on what you tried so far. One way to deal with it is preinstall the driver into the running image on the source system, before you migrate it. With XP that means going to control panel, add hardware, yes I have already added the hardware, add a new hardware device, install the hardware that I manually select, show all devices, have disk, browse to mounted virtio drivers iso, viostor\xp\x86 folder, and add the redhat scsi controller.

[thany]

How can I do that now?

 

My server has already migrated to unRAID. It would mean un-building it, and putting my old crap in again.

 

Btw, I've also gone through every STOP 7B guide on the planet and beyond, with nothing to yield. On top of that, I'm not using virtio, as per the video. They're on IDE. Or on SATA. Neither work.

 

 

See, this is why there needs to be a migration guide. I'd expect more from a commerical product

[JonathanM]

At this point, you will have to use a live cd boot image to gain access to your xp install and add the drivers for generic IDE manually that way. http://www.ubcd4win.org/ It's under registry tools.

[thany]

At of course, I'm now at a point that it took such an ungodly amount of time that I don't know what the heck I did that made it work. So I couldn't write up a wiki page for it even if I wanted to