Migrate an ESXi host to Harvester

I’ve just moved a Windows10 host from ESXi to Harvester 1.0.0.

Basically:

• stopped the VM on ESXi
• scped the disk volume (a <name>.vmdk ~500 byte text file, and a <name>-flat.vmdk binary fie) from the ESXi host to a Linux host

• converted the disk volume to qcow2

  $ qemu-img convert \
    -f vmdk \
    -O qcow2 \
    W10Home_0.vmdk W10Home.qcow
  

• uploaded that qcow2 to Harvester
• created a VM using the ‘raw image base template’
• on the volume tab I selected the image I’d just uploaded, and made it a SATA type (neither VirtIO nor SCSI worked, for me - OS could not find the boot disk)
• started the VM

It booted.

No idea on the performance yet - I’m just impressed it worked!

Drivers

I expect I can make it better with some drivers…

• in Images I created a new image using the URL of the Windows driver ISO file from here
• in Volumes I use the Add VM Image option to add a volume of type cd-rom using the image I just added
• rebooted the VM
• In the Windows 10 VM I installed the drivers from the CD-ROM - D:\

Once the drivers were installed, In Harvester I could alter VM to switch the root disk from SATA to VirtIO, and when the VM had rebooted the Win10 VM continued to work.