There are many reasons why I’m doing this. In the days when Virtual Machine was the thing, VMware Workstation was the go-to option for a Windows host to run VMs. We have to find cracked version for personal use, since there was no VirtualBox neither Hyper-V.
Many years ago, when I first decided to have a proper homelab in my household, I went blindly into ESXi just because VMware Workstation has already installed on all of my computers. Although I was pretty like Proxmox during that time, it was considered for not so serious projects.
Because I was open to sysadmin job during that time, I was not only installing ESXi, but also vSphere all together. I was also using CentOS for most of my Linux VMs and using Fedora as my daily driver to be familiar with RHEL operations.
But after time, Proxmox VE and XCP-ng became more attractive to me year by year. Finally, VMware is now Broadcom and ransomware gangs are apparently targeting on this change!
Whether it’s due to risk management or FOSS adoption, the goal is to get rid of VMware. BTW, VMware Workstation is the last proprietary software on my main computer, this is a big deal to me symbolically as well.
Download and copy proxmox-ve_8.4-1.iso to Ventoy
Boot into the installer program, make sure ethernet is connected to the LAN.
After install finishes, log into the server from computer via ip:8006 and run the post install scripts
bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/community-scripts/ProxmoxVE/main/tools/pve/post-pve-install.sh)"
Optional: Install PVE-mods for adding temperature dispaly on summary page.
apt-get install lm-sensors
# lm-sensors must be configured, run below to configure your sensors, apply temperature offsets. Refer to lm-sensors manual for more information.
sensors-detect
wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Meliox/PVE-mods/main/pve-mod-gui-sensors.sh
bash pve-mod-gui-sensors.sh install
# Then clear the browser cache to ensure all changes are visualized.
Export VMs from the ESXi client, creating folders accordingly to download .ova and .vmdk file for each VM.
When exporting VMs finished, transfer these files into Proxmox via USB drive for migration.
fdisk -l
mount /dev/sdbx /mnt
qm importovf 100 /mnt/VM0.ovf local-lvm
qm importovf 101 /mnt/VM1.ovf local-lvm
qm importovf 102 /mnt/VM2.ovf local-lvm
#Other useful commands
qm list
qm unlock
qm destroy
There is one VM causes Proxmox crash while importing everytime at a certain persentage. The work around is to use some partition imaging tools to migrate the OS with data instead of entire VM.
Datacenter - pve - local (pve) - ISO Images - Upload - PartitionTool.iso
Create VM - Finish - Hardware - Add - USB Device - Use USB Port - OS-Backup-Drive, then restore the system from backup
After all VM boots up, configure the hardware settings for the best performance .
Now, it’s time to setup SPICE. Firstly, install SPICE Guest Tools (driver) or qemu-guest-agent, the installation needs Volume Shadow Copy (VSS) service enabled.
Hardware - Display - Graphic card - SPICE - 16
Hardware - Add - Audio Device - ich9-intel-hda - SPICE
Hardware - Add - USB Device - Spice Port
Options - Spice Enhancement - Folder Sharing, Video Streaming - all
Install client on computer with yum install virt-viewer and now I can use SPICE from >_ Consle button by checking automatically open the file download popup
Two way clipboard copy-pasting and resolution auto-resizing works flawlessly. Drag’n drop files will lay on the desktop which is workable as well.
(Pending) SPICE USB Redirection Issue
I’m facing Error setting facl: Operation not permitted issue, there are some similar discussions on serverfault, github and getsol. But none of their solution worked for me because those fixes are for KVM/QEMU with spice-gtk not Proxmox w/ remote-viewer.
For now, I’m not using USB redirection a lot, so my workaround is to run firefox as root su -c 'DISPLAY=:0 firefox' - $user, login Proxmox and launch console from there. Maybe some day when I really need to solve this problem, I would dig into it to find a true fix.