23.2.4. Converting a VMware ESX virtualized guest

Ensure that the virtualized guest is stopped prior to running the v2v process.

To convert the virtualized guest, run:

virt-v2v -ic esx://esx.example.com/ -op pool --bridge brname vm-name

Where esx.example.com is the VMware ESX server, pool is the local storage pool to hold the image, brname is the name of a local network bridge to connect the converted guest's network to, and vm-name is the name of the virtualized guest. You may also use the --network parameter to connect to a locally managed network, or specify multiple mappings in /etc/virt-v2v.conf.

Authenticating to the ESX server

Connecting to the ESX server will require authentication. virt-v2v supports password authentication when connecting to ESX. It reads passwords from $HOME/.netrc. The format of this file is described in the netrc(5) man page. An example entry is:

machine esx.example.com login root password s3cr3t

.netrc permissions

The .netrc file must have a permission mask of 0600 to be read correctly by virt-v2v

Connecting to an ESX server with an invalid certificate

In non-production environments, the ESX server may have a non-valid certificate, for example a self-signed certificate. In this case, certificate checking can be explicitly disabled by adding '?no_verify=1' to the connection URI as shown below:

... -ic esx://esx.example.com/?no_verify=1 ...