About Proxmox

Proxmox Server Solutions GmbH was founded in 2005 by Martin Maurer and Dietmar Maurer who wanted to develop a friendly GNU/Linux software for secure and scalable IT environments. Three years, they launched the first stable 0.9 version of the Virtual Environment. Proxmox develops powerful and efficient opensource software to simplifty server management. Their products and services will enable you to deploy an affordable, secure and open-source IT infrastructure. Up through the years, they have always focused on being user centered, flexible and efficient. Always expanding product functionality and tailoring to customers needs.

Migrating from VMware

VMware has long been the industry standard. However, Proxmox makes migrating easier than ever. They offer a feauture rich and cost effective price model that can adapt and scale according to business needs. Besides having a great opensource community, they also provide flexibility to run both containerized and virtualized workloads, a feature not present in VMware.

Theres multiple ways to migrate, heres a 5 step and even a 1* step process to migrate your VM disks to Proxmox from VMware.

OVF Tool - simple 1 step process*

1. Prepare the systems and ensure that your Proxmox and VMware environments are up and running. The network storage, NFS (Network file system) should be accessible by both hypervisors.
2. Identify your VMWare environment. Know your VMware-specific hardware and data stores. Note down ESXi hosts, VN names, allocated CPU/RAM resources, disk sizes and network settings. You will need it later when configurating in Proxmox.
3. Convert VM disks. The primary difference between the hypervisors is the format of the virtual disks. VMware uses VMDK files while Proxmox uses QEMU. To convert you will need to convert your VMDK files into Proxmox QEMU format using the ‘qm’ command tool.
4. Mount your converted disks to Proxmox. Once converted, you can mount them onto Proxmox using the web interface or command-line tools. This process involves creating a new VM and attaching the converted disks.
5. Test that everything is working. Check that every functionality works by starting the VM and validate the network configuration and other settings.

* OVF Tool also offers more advanced settings for those who need it. Although having fewer steps, it requires more planning ahead of the migration