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Parent Category: Tutorials

Published: 30 December 2012

Hits: 24312

In this tutorial I'll show you how to convert a VirtualBox image to a VMware image.

I'm sure that there were many situation when you need to migrate a VirtualBox machine to a VMware one.

Tools used are VMware OVF Tool(ovftool.exe is a nice tool that will help you migrate from VirtualBox to VMware) and WMware vCenter Converter Standalone.

So, let's convert ova image to vmx:

C:\PROGRA~1\VMware\VMware OVF Tool>ovftool.exe D:\IOU_VM.ova D:\IOU_VM.vmx
Opening OVA source: D:\IOU_VM.ova
Opening VMX target: D:\IOU_VM.vmx
Info:    License agreement for the virtual system
License: FREE and Only for PERSONAL use
Accept end-user license agreement?
Write 'yes' or 'no' (write 'read' to reread the EULA):
yes
Error: OVF Package is not supported by target:
- Line 39: Unsupported hardware family 'virtualbox-2.2'.
Completed with errors

If you get Unsupported hardware family 'virtualbox-2.2' error you should try to use --lax argument.

This will transform the Unsupported hardware family 'virtualbox-2.2' error into a warning and convert ova file to vmx:

C:\PROGRA~1\VMware\VMware OVF Tool>ovftool.exe --lax D:\IOU_VM.ova D:\IOU_VM.vmx
Opening OVA source: D:\IOU_VM.ova
Opening VMX target: D:\IOU_VM.vmx
Info:    License agreement for the virtual system
License: FREE and Only for PERSONAL use
Accept end-user license agreement?
Write 'yes' or 'no' (write 'read' to reread the EULA):
yes
Warning:
- Line 39: Unsupported hardware family 'virtualbox-2.2'.
- Line 80: OVF hardware element 'ResourceType' with instance ID '5': No support
for the virtual hardware device type '20'.
Writing VMX file: D:\IOU_VM.vmx
Transfer Completed
Warning:
- No manifest entry found for: 'IOU VM-disk1.vmdk'.
- No manifest file found.
Completed successfully
C:\PROGRA~1\VMware\VMware OVF Tool>

After that you use WMware vCenter Converter Standalone and get a working vmware machine.

From now you can deploy VirtualBox machines on VMware ESXi hosts.