Converting KVM, Xen disks to VMware via QEMU

One way to migrate to an ESXi (VMware) hypervisor is to convert a KVM or Xen disk using the qemu-img disk handling software included in the QEMU virtualization system (link to the distributions http://www.qemu.org/download/#windows).

To convert, use the command with the keys specified in the example:

qemu-img convert -f qcow2 -O vmdk -o adapter_type=lsilogic,subformat=streamOptimized,compat6 xen-or-kvm-disk.qcow2 converted-disk.vmdk

It is assumed that the source disk format qcow2, the virtual machine using the disk, is turned off.

Then you need to copy the created disk to the ESXi host and use the utility to work with disks from VMware:

vmkfstools -i converted-disk.vmdk my-new-vm-disk.vmdk -d thin

Notes:

In the case of migration from Xen, the virtual machine may be in paravirtualization mode, which will require replacing the core to run on ESXi.
In the case of migrating Fedora, RHEL and CentOS that store the UUID of a disk in initramfs, it may be necessary to re-create the disk, to do this in rescue mode you need to use: dracut --regenerate-all --force

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