Converting to Proxmox Virtual Environment

When restoring VMware virtual machines from backup, you can restore the VMs as virtual machines that run on Proxmox Virtual Environment (Proxmox VE).

You can perform VM conversions from streaming backups, from secondary copies, or from IntelliSnap backup copies. You cannot perform a conversion from a Snap copy.

Before You Begin

• Create a Proxmox VE hypervisor. For more information, see Configuring Backups for Proxmox VMs.

• Before backing up the source VMs, ensure that appropriate drivers are available:

  • For Windows VMs, if the source VM has more than six disks, install VirtIO drivers on source VMs, to ensure that the instance will be bootable after conversion. The VirtIO network card driver is required.

  • For UNIX flavors that do not include VirtIO drivers, install VirtIO drivers on source VMs. By default, RHEL 7.0 drivers have VirtIO drivers pre-loaded.

• Before converting a Linux VM: If the source VM contains a device entry in etc/fstab in the following format:

   
  /dev/device_name mountpoint fs_type mount_args

  change the entry in the source VM to use the following format instead:

   
  UUID=fs_uuid mountpoint fs_type mount_args

  You can run the lsblk -f command on the source VM to return a list of the UUIDs for block devices in the source VM.

Start the Restore Wizard

1. From the Command Center navigation pane, go to Protect > Virtualization.

   The Overview page appears.

2. Click the VM groups tab.

   The VM group page appears.

3. On the VM groups tab, in the row for the VM group, click the action button, and then click Restore.

   The Select restore type page appears.

4. To convert the full virtual machine, select Full virtual machine.

   The Full virtual machine page appears.

5. Select the instances to restore, and then click Restore.

   The restore wizard appears.

Specify the Restore Destination

1. For Type, select Out of place.

2. For Restore as, select Proxmox VE.

3. For Destination, select the hypervisor to restore the instances to.

4. For Access node, select Automatic or select an access node.

   If you are restoring multiple instances, select Automatic to distribute the workload across the access nodes that are assigned for the destination hypervisor. First, the instances are assigned to access nodes that are in the same zone. Then, instances are assigned to access nodes that are in the same region. If no access nodes are available in the same zone or region, then the instances are assigned to access nodes using the round-robin method. The Automatic option is available for full restore and conversion operations from both streaming backups and IntelliSnap backup copies.

5. Click Next.

   The Virtual Machines page appears.

Specify the Virtual Machines and Settings

1. Select the VMs to restore, and then click Configure restore options.

2. If you selected only one VM to restore, the Configure restore options dialog box appears. Do the following:

   1. Enter a name for the restored virtual machine in the VM display name field.

   2. Select a host node to restore to from the Node list.

   3. Select storage to restore to from the Storage list.

   4. To modify network settings, do the following:

      1. Under Network settings, click the action button for a source network, and then select Edit.

         The Add network settings dialog box appears.

      2. Select a Source network and a Destination network.

   5. Click Save.

3. If you selected two or more VMs to restore, the Configure restore options for multiple VMs dialog box appears.

   Note

   If you want to modify network settings for two or more VMs, you must go back and select each VM separately (as in Step 2, above) and then modify their network settings. Then you can proceed with the sub-steps, below.

   Do the following:

   1. (Optional.) To add a prefix to the VM display names, move the Add a prefix to the VM name toggle key to the right and then enter the prefix.

   2. (Optional.) To add a suffix to the VM display names, move the Add a suffix to the VM name toggle key to the right and then enter the suffix.

   3. Select a host node to restore to from the Node list.

   4. Select storage to restore to from the Storage list.

   5. Click Save.

4. Click Next.

   The Restore Options page appears.

Specify the Restore Options

1. Specify the following settings:

   • Power on VMs after restore: Automatically restart virtual machines after they are restored.

     The power state of the virtual machine does not affect subsequent backups. If the virtual machine is powered on during backups, by default, the virtual machine is powered on again after the restore completes (unless you clear this check box).

   • Unconditionally overwrite if it already exists: Delete an existing virtual machine and replace it with the restored virtual machine.

     Note

     If an existing virtual machine with the same name exists on the destination host and you do not select Unconditionally overwrite if it already exists, the restore job fails.

   • Reuse existing VM client: Reuse the existing virtual machine and map its information, such as client name, host name, and client ID, to the source virtual machine.

   • Notify user on job completion: Receive an email notification that the restore is complete.

2. Click Next.

   The Summary page appears.

Review the Summary and Start the Restore

1. Review the summary to verify the settings.

2. Click Submit to start the restore.

Results

• After restoring a VM to Proxmox VE, you might need to perform the following actions:

  • Manually initialize SCSI disks to bring them online.

  • For UNIX guest instances to launch, select a boot option such as rescue mode.

• The OS type for the restored VM will be determined automatically based on the source VM's OS type. If needed, you can change the OS of the restored VM in the Proxmox VE environment.

• If the source VM has more than six disks, Proxmox VE attaches disk 0 through disk 5 as SATA disks, and attaches any additional disks as SCSI disks.

• Some source VMs that have older operating systems, such as Windows 2008, might not be able to boot from SATA disks.

• For EFI-based VMs, the system creates an extra EFI disk, which helps in persisting configurations such as boot order.