I have found a successful and fast way to migrate from Xenserver to Vmware. Yes, Xenserver is a turd and it's real pain in the ass to migrate VMs from it. No other way worked for me.

Fastest way to migrate Xenserver VM to ESXi(i tried with Xen 7.2 to VMware 6.0 U3):

Note IP address of VM because when you remove XS tools the IP configuration will not move on new adapter.

Uninstall Xenserver tools

Remove in Device manager Xen PV Bus, it remove all other Xen hidden devices. Double check if there are no hidden devices View>Show Hidden Devices. Check Disk, Network Adapter)

delete all xen*.sys in C:\Windows\System32\drivers - 9 files by default. Differ between OS.

delete all xen*.dll in C:\Windows\System32\ - 19 files by default. Differ between OS.

Shutdown VM

Export VM using CMD and not the GUI because you can export without using SSL encryption, it's lot faster. You can export in only in XVA format from cmd though, but it's still faster to export in XVA and convert to OVF.  Once you run command you can see the VM icon becomes yellow and you can see export progress in Xencenter notifications.

go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\XenCenter and open cmd in that location. Run command:

xe.exe -s <xenserver_ip> -u root -pw <passwpod> vm-export vm="<name_of_vm_case_sensitive>" filename=C:\Export\<name_of_vm>.xva --nossl

Once export finishes you need to convert the xva appliance file to OVG.

Download and Install XenConvert (Xenconvert is depricated and you cannot download it from Citrix. Don't download 2.4.1 version. It doesn't have an option to convert XVA to OVF or any other option to convert vdisk file. Download 2.3.2 version. Here is the download link -http://downloadns.citrix.com.edgesuite.net/akdlm/5322/XenConvert_Install_x64.exe)

Run Xenconvert choose -  From - Xenserver virtual appliance,To - open virtualization format ovf

Once conversion finishes rename vhd files to proper vm name, because it will called ref**.vhd.

You cannot import OVF into VMware because it will show some kind of XML error. You have convert OVF to VMDK.

Download and Install Starwind V2V converter latest version and run it(you need to register with legit email. They will send you download link in email):

Run Starwind. Source image location - local file> choose VHD file >choose VMware ESX server image and run conversion

After it finishes it will create two files *.VMDK and *-flat.VMDK. Create new folder in datastore, copy both files there and wait till VMware finishes combining both files.

Create new VM and choose existing disk, find your VMDK file in datastore and you are done.

Win2012 will boot straight away.

For Win2008(this works for both Win2008 and WIn2008r2) you need to do these extra steps because VM will go in BSOD because it's laking SCSI driver(once you remove XS tools you will see in Device Manager that it's missing SCSI controller driver. You cannot install VMware scsi driver on source machine because it's not compatible). Forget about other solutions like loading hive and changing services which to start. It doesn't work anymore. It will still go in BSOD.

Enable SSH server on ESXi host

connect via putty to ESXI host which hosts the Win2008 VM

go to /vmfs/volumes/<name of datastore>/<nameofWindows2008VM>

open with vi editor -  <nameofWindows2008VM>.vmdk

change adapter type to - ddb.adapterType = "ide"

Edit VM settings from vsphere client, remove harddisk with option Remove from Virtual machine and then press Add> Harddisk and and this time it show that it will add IDE controller, choose IDE address(0:0) and add SCSI CD/DVD on SCSI address (0:1).

You are done(You can do it while you are creating new VM, just choose option Edit VM settings before finish).win2008 will successfully boot.

Boot VM and check if Device Manager has installed LSI adapter driver.

Shutdown VM

connect via putty to ESXI host which hosts the Win2008 VM

go to /vmfs/volumes/<name of datastore>/<nameofWindows2008r2VM>

open with vi editor -  <nameofWindows2008r2VM>.vmdk

change adapter type back to - ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"

Open Edit VM settings from vsphere client, remove harddisk with option Remove from virtual machine again and then  Add Harddisk. Now it will show SCSI controller, choose SCSI address(0:0). Then Remove CD/DVD which previously added and press ok.

win2018 VM will now boot with LSILOGIC SCSI driver.

Good luck!

I have found a successful and fast way to migrate from Xenserver to Vmware. Yes, Xenserver is a turd and it's real pain in the ass to migrate VMs from it. No other way worked for me.

Fastest way to migrate Xenserver VM to ESXi(i tried with Xen 7.2 to VMware 6.0 U3):

Note IP address of VM because when you remove XS tools the IP configuration will not move on new adapter.

Uninstall Xenserver tools

Remove in Device manager Xen PV Bus, it remove all other Xen hidden devices. Double check if there are no hidden devices View>Show Hidden Devices. Check Disk, Network Adapter)

delete all xen*.sys in C:\Windows\System32\drivers - 9 files by default. Differ between OS.

delete all xen*.dll in C:\Windows\System32\ - 19 files by default. Differ between OS.

Shutdown VM

Export VM using CMD and not the GUI because you can export without using SSL encryption, it's lot faster. You can export in only in XVA format from cmd though, but it's still faster to export in XVA and convert to OVF.  Once you run command you can see the VM icon becomes yellow and you can see export progress in Xencenter notifications.

go to C:\Program Files (x86)\Citrix\XenCenter and open cmd in that location. Run command:

xe.exe -s <xenserver_ip> -u root -pw <passwpod> vm-export vm="<name_of_vm_case_sensitive>" filename=C:\Export\<name_of_vm>.xva --nossl

Once export finishes you need to convert the xva appliance file to OVG.

Download and Install XenConvert (Xenconvert is depricated and you cannot download it from Citrix. Don't download 2.4.1 version. It doesn't have an option to convert XVA to OVF or any other option to convert vdisk file. Download 2.3.2 version. Here is the download link -http://downloadns.citrix.com.edgesuite.net/akdlm/5322/XenConvert_Install_x64.exe)

Run Xenconvert choose -  From - Xenserver virtual appliance,To - open virtualization format ovf

Once conversion finishes rename vhd files to proper vm name, because it will called ref**.vhd.

You cannot import OVF into VMware because it will show some kind of XML error. You have convert OVF to VMDK.

Download and Install Starwind V2V converter latest version and run it(you need to register with legit email. They will send you download link in email):

Run Starwind. Source image location - local file> choose VHD file >choose VMware ESX server image and run conversion

After it finishes it will create two files *.VMDK and *-flat.VMDK. Create new folder in datastore, copy both files there and wait till VMware finishes combining both files.

Create new VM and choose existing disk, find your VMDK file in datastore and you are done.

Win2012 will boot straight away.

For Win2008(this works for both Win2008 and WIn2008r2) you need to do these extra steps because VM will go in BSOD because it's laking SCSI driver(once you remove XS tools you will see in Device Manager that it's missing SCSI controller driver. You cannot install VMware scsi driver on source machine because it's not compatible). Forget about other solutions like loading hive and changing services which to start. It doesn't work anymore. It will still go in BSOD.

Enable SSH server on ESXi host

connect via putty to ESXI host which hosts the Win2008 VM

go to /vmfs/volumes/<name of datastore>/<nameofWindows2008VM>

open with vi editor -  <nameofWindows2008VM>.vmdk

change adapter type to - ddb.adapterType = "ide"

Edit VM settings from vsphere client, remove harddisk with option Remove from Virtual machine and then press Add> Harddisk and and this time it show that it will add IDE controller, choose IDE address(0:0) and add SCSI CD/DVD on SCSI address (0:1).

You are done(You can do it while you are creating new VM, just choose option Edit VM settings before finish).win2008 will successfully boot.

Boot VM and check if Device Manager has installed LSI adapter driver.

Shutdown VM

connect via putty to ESXI host which hosts the Win2008 VM

go to /vmfs/volumes/<name of datastore>/<nameofWindows2008r2VM>

open with vi editor -  <nameofWindows2008r2VM>.vmdk

change adapter type back to - ddb.adapterType = "lsilogic"

Open Edit VM settings from vsphere client, remove harddisk with option Remove from virtual machine again and then  Add Harddisk. Now it will show SCSI controller, choose SCSI address(0:0). Then Remove CD/DVD which previously added and press ok.

win2018 VM will now boot with LSILOGIC SCSI driver.

Good luck!

Hi,

I faced the same issue wherein storage went down unexpectedly and when it came online, 2 of 3 LUNs became inactive.

What we tried

Rescan

serivce restart on host

we rebooted the host.

and finally took a graceful reboot of the storage controller one by one which fixed this issue.

I had ESXi 5.0 with HP MSA storage DAS box.

Thanks

Vmwarediary.com/vmwarediary.in

Hi Maxim
please try if you can run this command via putty:
dd if=/dev/disks/naa.60060e80104d9b9004f348c100000015:1 of=/vmfs/volume/DATASTORE/maxim.1536 bs=1M count=1536
(replace DATASTORE with the name of one of your other datastores)

This command should create a file of 1536 MB in the datastore you specified.
If this works please download maxim.1536 , compress it and provide a download link.
If it fails - dd will display an error message - please post the message in your next reply.
Ulli

Hi. We are still on v6.5U1, I think some hotfixes. And have applied the latest Dell R730 bios which mitagates variant 3 or 4 of meltdown. However any VM that powers on that host, cannot be vMotion off. Incompatibilty hardware warning given. I guess I was under the false assumption that EVC mode should have kept the cpu changes on the new Bios from propagating to the hosts? We were going to get the new Bios rolled out, and then rollout v6.5U2 vCenter, and then the v6.5U2 on the hypervisors. Now I am a bit confused as to what is going on. I may just have to attempt to revert the firmware back on this 1 host we did first. I am hoping someone can educate me. Thanks,,,

I guess I was under the false assumption that EVC mode should have kept the cpu changes on the new Bios from propagating to the hosts?

Unless I'm mistaken too, that's actually how it's supposed to work. EVC should only present the new CPU features to VMs if all hosts in a cluster support these features.

However, during a recent upgrade, I had to set EVC again after upgrading all hosts (same EVC level, just open the settings and hit ok) in order for the hosts to present the new CPU features to the VMs.

That said, it may be worth a try to do the same in your environment, i.e. reconfigure EVC so that the already upgraded host hides the settings.

André

Thank you very much. I may try that!

If I were going, I'd absolutely wear the shirt.

After four years of backlash I'd think they'd be well along the road to rebuilding the C# client.

The console function when accessing a 6.5 host directly is clean and neat whereas it's actually worse (opens a whole new browser window) within vCenter.....how backward is that?

Further notes:

The Aquantia 10GB controller, the Intel wireless controller, an add-in PCIE 3.0 board in the PCIE x1 slot,  and the USB 3.1 controller (as compared to the 2 x USB 3.0 controllers, which do passthrough) all won't passthrough-- most of these perpetually "need reboot".  I've read this can be caused by being behind a non-ACS compatible PCIE switch.  Setting the parameter to disable ACS check to TRUE results in a non-bootable host.  All BIOS parameters that I can identify (including "enable ACS") are enabled, and I am using the beta bios with AGESA 1.0.0.6.  Stumped, although none of this is absolutely essential to me.  Another possibility (at least for the 3.1 controller) is that it seems to be in the same IOMMU group as a PCIE bridge that can't be enabled for passthrough (greyed out.) The 3.1 controller is slightly different, VM won't power up with a message that a device isn't passthrough capable.

of 4 GPU's in the system (1080 FE, 2 x 1070Ti FE, 1 x 1060 3Gb), all can be passed through.  One of the 1070 Ti's gives the dreaded error 43, even with the hypervisor.cpuid flag set to FALSE.  The others work very nicely.

I can try replacing one of the video boards with an AMD, and using software USB passthrough from the two working controllers, but it would be really nice not to have to do that (passing through USB between VM's means that VM's become dependent on eachother  for their keyboards to work).  And the error 43 just gets my goat because it is so poorly documented on the NVidia side.

Will post further updates, would appreciate any advice.  Thanks

I contacted VMWare in regards to using the same key on multiple hosts they said no issues doing that....

Hope that helps...
Casey

Hi, continuum.

Thanks for reply.

I compress file with 7z1805. Link  maxim.7z - Google Drive

Hi, Jitu211003!

Thanks for advices. I will try to reboot storage controller tomorrow.  I hope this helps

Hi;

First of all I'm completely newbie in Vmware. I was working on my project and suddenly the power went down and came back again. after that, I cannot connect to my ESXi 6.0 host. I can ping and even can connect remotely by SSH. But neither Vsphere Client nor HTTP/HTTPS work. I searched the net and found that "hostd" and "vpxa" are not running. I started the processes but after some seconds they stopped automatically. Here are commands:

[root@timaz-esxi:~] /etc/init.d/hostd status

hostd is not running.

[root@timaz-esxi:~] /etc/init.d/hostd start

Ramdisk 'hostd' with estimated size of 303MB already exists

hostd started.

[root@timaz-esxi:~] /etc/init.d/hostd status

hostd is running.

[root@timaz-esxi:~] /etc/init.d/hostd status

hostd is not running.

[root@timaz-esxi:~] /etc/init.d/vpxa status

vpxa is not running

[root@timaz-esxi:~] /etc/init.d/vpxa start

[root@timaz-esxi:~] /etc/init.d/vpxa status

vpxa is running

.

.

.

after a minute:

.

[root@timaz-esxi:~] /etc/init.d/vpxa status

vpxa is not running

[root@timaz-esxi:~] /etc/init.d/hostd status

hostd is not running.

I checked the log files and here they are:

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[root@timaz-esxi:~] tail -f /var/log/vmkernel.log

2018-06-22T10:21:55.669Z cpu1:32788)NMP: nmp_ThrottleLogForDevice:3298: Cmd 0x1a (0x439dc081ee80, 0) to dev "mpx.vmhba1:C0:T0:L0" on path "vmhba1:C0:T0:L0" Failed: H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5 0x20 0x0. Act:NONE

2018-06-22T10:22:54.617Z cpu2:34300)NMP: nmp_ThrottleLogForDevice:3298: Cmd 0x85 (0x439dc08a3c80, 34300) to dev "naa.600508e000000000e86e9fee026aaa01" on path "vmhba0:C1:T0:L0" Failed: H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5 0x20 0x0. Act:NONE

2018-06-22T10:22:54.617Z cpu2:34300)ScsiDeviceIO: 2651: Cmd(0x439dc08a3c80) 0x4d, CmdSN 0x5 from world 34300 to dev "naa.600508e000000000e86e9fee026aaa01" failed H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5 0x20 0x0.

2018-06-22T10:22:54.618Z cpu2:34300)NMP: nmp_ThrottleLogForDevice:3298: Cmd 0x1a (0x439dc08a3c80, 34300) to dev "naa.600508e000000000e86e9fee026aaa01" on path "vmhba0:C1:T0:L0" Failed: H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5 0x24 0x0. Act:NONE

2018-06-22T10:22:54.618Z cpu2:34300)ScsiDeviceIO: 2651: Cmd(0x439dc08a3c80) 0x1a, CmdSN 0x6 from world 34300 to dev "naa.600508e000000000e86e9fee026aaa01" failed H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5 0x24 0x0.

2018-06-22T10:22:54.619Z cpu2:34300)NMP: nmp_ThrottleLogForDevice:3298: Cmd 0x85 (0x439dc08a3c80, 34300) to dev "naa.600508e000000000e86e9fee026aaa01" on path "vmhba0:C1:T0:L0" Failed: H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5 0x20 0x0. Act:NONE

2018-06-22T10:26:55.659Z cpu1:32861)NMP: nmp_ThrottleLogForDevice:3298: Cmd 0x12 (0x439dc0873940, 0) to dev "naa.600508e000000000e86e9fee026aaa01" on path "vmhba0:C1:T0:L0" Failed: H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5 0x24 0x0. Act:NONE

2018-06-22T10:26:55.669Z cpu2:32789)NMP: nmp_ThrottleLogForDevice:3298: Cmd 0x1a (0x439dc0873940, 0) to dev "mpx.vmhba1:C0:T0:L0" on path "vmhba1:C0:T0:L0" Failed: H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5 0x20 0x0. Act:NONE

2018-06-22T10:31:55.658Z cpu2:32952)NMP: nmp_ThrottleLogForDevice:3298: Cmd 0x12 (0x439dc0886940, 0) to dev "naa.600508e000000000e86e9fee026aaa01" on path "vmhba0:C1:T0:L0" Failed: H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5 0x0 0x0. Act:NONE

2018-06-22T10:31:55.670Z cpu0:32787)NMP: nmp_ThrottleLogForDevice:3298: Cmd 0x1a (0x439dc0886940, 0) to dev "mpx.vmhba1:C0:T0:L0" on path "vmhba1:C0:T0:L0" Failed: H:0x0 D:0x2 P:0x0 Valid sense data: 0x5 0x20 0x0. Act:NONE

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

[root@timaz-esxi:~] tail -f /var/log/vmkwarning.log

0:00:00:00.000 cpu0:1)WARNING: Serial: 648: Invalid serial port config: mem-mapped to addr 0x0.

2018-06-22T09:52:05.016Z cpu1:33097)WARNING: LinuxSignal: 541: ignored unexpected signal flags 0x2 (sig 17)

2018-06-22T09:52:30.431Z cpu2:33185)WARNING: ScsiScan: 1643: Failed to add path vmhba0:C0:T0:L0 : Not found

2018-06-22T09:52:31.466Z cpu2:33185)WARNING: ScsiScan: 1643: Failed to add path vmhba0:C0:T1:L0 : Not found

2018-06-22T09:52:33.319Z cpu2:33049)WARNING: NetDVS: 659: portAlias is NULL

2018-06-22T09:52:43.643Z cpu1:33353)WARNING: Supported VMs 128, Max VSAN VMs 400, SystemMemoryInGB 40

2018-06-22T09:52:43.643Z cpu1:33353)WARNING: MaxFileHandles: 3840, Prealloc 1, Prealloc limit: 32 GB, Host scaling factor: 1

2018-06-22T09:52:43.643Z cpu1:33353)WARNING: DOM memory will be preallocated.

2018-06-22T09:52:45.552Z cpu1:33409)WARNING: FTCpt: 476: Using IPv6 address to start server listener

2018-06-22T09:53:32.872Z cpu2:33042)WARNING: LinuxThread: 340: Error cloning thread: -28 (bad0081)

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

And this is what I got while trying to connect to the ESXi host with Vsphere Client:

I have many VMs on that ESXi host. How can I fix the issue or get my VMs from that ESXi host? tnx.

Do you use vSAN? Could it be that there ended the place? A lack of space can affect the inaccessibility of ESXi.

Migration of ESXi 6.0 from OLD vCenter 6.0 to New vCenter 6.5 while OLD VC is down , IS it possible ?

I was unable to change time zone and after reading this i have changed time zone in esxi 6.7.

Geek Squad Tech Support

no I don't use vSAN. ESXi host has a local disk.

interestingly I upgraded it from 6.0 to 6.5 but the same problem is still there; That I can connect to the host via SSH but not via HTTP/HTTPS/Vsphere Client.

You won't able to connect ESXI 6.5 with traditional vSphere c# client. In browser you have to connect with https://ipaddressofEsxiHost/ui

There shouldn't be any issue unless you had distributed switch configured on old vCenter. You will have to configure networking on new vCenter accordingly.