Migrating VMware ESXi to Proxmox VE

Real-world use case

You want to leave the VMware ecosystem without starting from scratch: here's how to migrate an OVHcloud dedicated server from ESXi to Proxmox VE.

Broadcom's strategy

Since November 2023, Broadcom has acquired VMware. Financially, VMware vSphere's product plans have changed, and licensing agreements have been revised. It turns out that hosting providers like OVHcloud no longer offer VMware ESXi hypervisor installation on dedicated servers. Without a subscription, the unavailability of ISO images is a blocker for clients who purchased perpetual licenses. It's therefore necessary to migrate to the new annual subscription model.

From there, the standard VMware license is offered at around 50 euros per CPU core (with a minimum of 16 cores). The public price therefore hovers around 800 euros excl. tax per year.

In April 2025, the minimum core count increases to 72 cores, i.e. 3600 euros per year for a VMware Standard license. This notably includes product support and maintenance, with access to the latest VMware vSphere version. The tech press headlined it as "Broadcom tightens its VMware licensing policy".

Furthermore, the free ESXi license is no longer available, and it now seems clear that Broadcom is organizing itself to meet the demand of large accounts while abandoning the education, small business, and SMB sectors.

The OVHcloud context

I came to understand this change through OVHcloud. One of my clients has a dedicated server with a perpetual VMware ESXi license. It would be hard for them to justify investing 3600 euros/year starting in April for their hypervisor, when their usage hasn't changed at all.

Here's OVHcloud's response regarding the changes brought about by Broadcom: https://help.ovhcloud.com/csm/fr-dedicated-servers-esxi-end-of-support?id=kb_article_view&sysparm_article=KB0064645

The host recommends migrating to one of the following solutions:

• Proxmox VE
• Microsoft Hyper-V

The choice to switch to the Proxmox VE (Virtual Environment) hypervisor was driven by reasons related to management cost, simplified major version upgrades, the open-source model, and also because the community contributes to the project. Specific to our context, we also wanted native support for Failover IPs, which has been the case at OVHcloud for Proxmox VE since December 2024 (just as it was under VMware ESXi).

The migration project plan

Migrating a VMware ESXi environment to Proxmox VE is an operation that needs to be planned ahead of time to ensure the project's success. Here are the main steps of the plan:

• Assess the existing environment
• Prepare Proxmox VE according to best practices
• Transfer the VMware ESXi VMs to the Proxmox VE hypervisor
• Convert the virtual machine files to the appropriate format
• Import the virtual machine files into Proxmox VE
• Test that the new virtual machines work correctly
• Optimize the new virtual machines
• Decommission the old VMware ESXi server
• Adapt the backup and restore plan for the Proxmox VE hypervisor

Proxmox VE fundamentals

Going into production required me to build up my skills; understanding the essential concepts was necessary to ensure the success of the migration to Proxmox VE and its administration.

1. Review the content of the Proxmox VE training course to get certified: https://www.proxmox.com/en/services/training-courses/training#detail-admin-training
2. Access the documentation directly from the server: https://yourproxmoxserverip:8006/pve-docs/index.html"
3. Check the official wiki: https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Main_Page

Overall, preparing the migration and aligning it with VMware vSphere environment practices (without vCenter) took me about 4 hours. My past experience with KVM, VMware vSphere, and Hyper-V helped a lot.

The key points of the migration

Here are the technical points I noted:

• Restoring VMware virtual machines with Veeam Backup & Replication v12.3, link.
• Restore failure for one of the virtual machines from Veeam Backup & Replication.
• Transferring the VMware virtual machine's disks (about 1TB) to Proxmox with scp:

nohup sshpass -p 'password-esx' scp -o PubkeyAuthentication=no -o PreferredAuthentications=keyboard-interactive,password -v root@ip-esx:/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/MYVM/* /ZFS/MYVM/

• Converting the disks from VMDK format to RAW:

qemu-img convert -f vmdk MYVM.vmdk -O raw MYVM-disk-1.raw

• Creating a Proxmox virtual machine with no OS and no disk.
• Importing the raw-format disks into the previously created virtual machine:

qm disk import 105 MYVM-disk-1.raw ZFS --format raw

• Adapting drivers for the newly deployed VMs
• Auditing logs and services
• Removing data from the old VMware server
• Adapting our backup and restore plan with Veeam Backup & Replication.

Conclusion

It's not easy to give up a leading hypervisor in its field like VMware vSphere. Credit must be given to the work done by Proxmox VE Server Solutions GmbH and the community that helps maintain it.