Migrating a Hyper-V VM to Proxmox (without 3rd party products)

Overview

This guide will show you how to migrate a Hyper-V VM to a Proxmox host without using 3rd party products like Starwinds V2V.

Procedure

1. Stop the Hyper-V VM

Stop your Hyper-V VM that you would like to migrate, either through the Hyper-V management UI or PowerShell:

# Get the VMs on the host
PS C:\> Get-VM

Name                    State   CPUUsage(%) MemoryAssigned(M) Uptime              Status             Version
----                    -----   ----------- ----------------- ------              ------             -------
vm-needs-migration      Running 3           4096              21.15:00:19.2640000 Operating normally 10.0

# Stop the VM in question
PS C:\> Stop-VM -Name "vm-needs-migration"

# Confirm VM has not been auto-restarted
PS C:\> Get-VM

Name                    State   CPUUsage(%) MemoryAssigned(M) Uptime              Status             Version
----                    -----   ----------- ----------------- ------              ------             -------
vm-needs-migration      Off     0           0                 00:00:00            Operating normally 10.0

2. Locate the VM’s attached disks

Find the path of the VM’s attached disks:

# Find the VHDX path of the VM disk
PS C:\> Get-VMHardDiskDrive -VMName "vm-needs-migration" | select Path

Path
----
V:\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks\vm-needs-migration.vhdx

Caution

If your VM disk shows a .avhdx extension or a GUID appended to the end of the name before the file extension, you might have VM checkpoints. Depending on your Hyper-V deployment, VMs may checkpoint themselves automatically because of Hyper-V settings or backup solutions. Delete/merge all of the checkpoints before continuing!

3. Move the VM disk to the Proxmox host

# Move the VM disk to Proxmox
PS C:\> scp "V:\Hyper-V\Virtual Hard Disks\vm-needs-migration.vhdx" root@proxmox:/tmp/
root@proxmox's password:
vm-needs-migration.vhdx                                  100% 8292MB  73.5MB/s   01:52

4. Create the VM in Proxmox and import the VHDX

# Verify VM disk is present
root@proxmox:~# ls /tmp
...
vm-needs-migration.vhdx
...

# Import disk to VM
# Replace <your vm id> with the ID of the VM that is taking the disk
# Replace <your storage> with your storage pool
root@proxmox:~# qm importdisk <your vm id> /tmp/vm-needs-migration.vhdx <your storage>
importing disk '/tmp/vm-needs-migration.vhdx' to VM 132 ...
transferred 0.0 B of 60.0 GiB (0.00%)
...
transferred 60.0 GiB of 60.0 GiB (100.00%)
unused0: successfully imported disk 'vm_storage_pool:vm-132-disk-1'

Then, in the Proxmox UI:

• Add the unused disk to your VM (Hardware > Unused Disk <number>)
• Enable the disk for booting (if it’s a bootable disk) in the VM options (Options > Boot Order)
• Boot the VM

5. Troubleshooting

If the VM does not boot because it was a Generation 2 Hyper-V VM, the EFI boot variables did not come over with the disk. They can be re-added through the VM’s UEFI BIOS settings.

To recover the boot entry:

1. Press any key to enter the UEFI BIOS
2. Navigate to Boot Maintenance Manager
3. Navigate to Boot Options
4. Navigate to Add Boot Option
5. Navigate to your boot disk
6. Navigate to <EFI>
7. Choose your distribution’s folder. Options vary by bootloader and operating system - for this example we’ll assume Debian. Navigate to <debian>.
8. Select shimx64.efi if it exists (otherwise grubx64.efi)
9. Give it a name - Debian is fine
10. Select Commit Changes and Exit
11. Select Change Boot Order
12. Press Enter on the row showing Debian and <UEFI QEMU HARDDISK>, select the Debian option, press + to move it to the top, then press Enter
13. Select Commit Changes and Exit
14. Press Esc
15. Press F10 to save, then Y to confirm
16. Reset the VM, or return to the previous menu and select Reset

You should now reach the GRUB bootloader and be able to boot into Debian.