CentOS - Mar 2021 - Centos 8 host -> VMware host

Everyone,
-- 
Greg Ennis


I am trying to move some Centos 7 guests off of a Centos 8 host to a
VMware host machine. 
qemu-img is a great tool in kvm to convert the files from *.qcow2 to
*.vmdk very easily
with the command :

qemu-img convert -f qcow2 -O vmdk *.qcow2 *.vmdk

I have been able to easily move these files to the 'usb vmware' system
with scp from the
Centos 8 host to the VmWare host.  (Interesting in that I could not get
the scp in the
VMware host to work). 

Unfortunately, I have not figured out how to import the files into
VMware virtual machine
yet.  I can easily create a new virtual machine with a CentOS8 *.iso
file which tells me
that the Vmware host is working.   I may have been looking in the wrong
places for
documentation, but so fare I have not been impressed with VMware's
documentation to import
pre-existing kvm guests.

Do any of you have any tutorial links as to how to import these *.vmdk
files into VMware?

Thanks for your help!!!!

Greg Ennis
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

Everyone,

I did find a way to copy a 'live' Centos 7 system to VMWare by way of
using VMWare-converter that had to be installed on a microsoft Windows
machine on the same network.  (vCenter Converter Standalone 6.2.0.1). I
consulted with some Microsoft guys that showed me how to do this.

You will be required to have a login account with VMWare, but this does
work and is quite easy to use.  The design of the software is to work
on Windows, and to copy a physical live machine to a newly created
VMWare quest.  

There were a few problems when I booted the new CentOs 7 VMWare guest,
and I am still working on those problems, but this process appears to
work.  Although the the VCenter Converter is designed to copy a
physical disc I used it to copy a KVM Centos 7 guest which worked
better than I expected.

I am still working on finding a way to import a shutdowned KVM guest
machine file directly into VMWare but have not found it yet.

I have also not found a way for a linux desktop network viewer for a
VMWare guest on the network.

I am still very very new with the use of VMWare but I would say the
network has been much easier to set up with VMWare than KVM, but the
gui with KVM is much better than the gui with VMWARE.

With the eol of Centos 8 being 9 months about I hope this note helps
others that have to stop using Centos 8 as a hypervisor. I would surely
like to hear from some of the veterans of this process.  There just has
to be a way to import a KVM file directly to VMWare. Please accept my
apologies if some think this dialog is off topic, but it is not off
topic for me.  I have grown to love Centos and will always appreciate
the great help and assistance from this forum!!!!!

Thanks,

Greg Ennis

Everyone,

My final solution to the moving a Centos 7 machine to VMWare turned out to be
the use of
vCenter Converter Standalone 6.2.0.1 that has to be executed on a Windows
machine.  I ran
this product on a kvm guest Windows 10 machine and it worked very well.  The
transfer had
to be done while the Centos 7 machine was booted.  I have used this now to
transfer a kvm
guest Centos 7 machine and a physical machine Centos 7 both to VMWare.

There was a problem when I booted both machines that occurred at the beginning
of the boot
process before the kernel was accepted.  The screen was filed with error
messages which
stated repetitively :

"error: can't find command ':'"

I had to enter a <Cr> several times to bypass the error messages and the
the boot proceed
normally. 

I found :
https://communities.vmware.com/t5/Converter-Standalone-Discussions/p2v-redhat-error-can-t-find-command/td-p/497444

Apparently the VMWare converter has a bug in it that adds ": " to the
beginning of a line
that starts with "#" in /boot/grub2/grub.cfg

All I needed to do was to edit grub.cfg and  remove the ": " that was
present in many of
the lines that had previously been commented.  

A reboot was normal.

If any of you find a way to do this task with Linux I would surely like to hear
from you,
but if you are looking for a way to make a migration from a physical machine or
guest
machine to VMWare this worked well.  

Greg Ennis