[vmware] Migrating from VMWARE to VirtualBox

I'm trying to migrate an existing VM from VMWARE to VirtualBox. I've made a copy of the Virtual Machine folder for the VM (so I can experiment and not destroy the original) and have successfully created a VM in VirtualBox. I've got everything booting and running, but the issue is that VM is using the "flat" disk image instead of the correct disk image causing the disk image to be from the past (I know this because all the files on the machine have a timestamp of 2009).

To elaborate, in the VM's folder i have the following vmdk files:

Win2003.vmdk (1 K)
Win2003-flat.vmdk (15 gigs)
Win2003-000002.vmdk (10 gigs)

NOTE: the disk is dynamic.

Looking in the configuration of the VM under VMWARE, it says that it's using the win2003-000002.vmdk as the disk image.

When I import the disk image into VirtualBox (the Win2003.vmdk file), it uses the Win2003-flat.vmdk disk image.

My question is, what can I do to either combine or import the Win2003-000002.vmdk disk image into the Win2003-flat.vmdk disk image so that VirtualBox will use the correct disk image?

I've some instructions on using vmware-vdiskmanager.exe to accomplish this, but I get an error stating "The parent of this virtual disk could not be opened."

QEMU has a fantastic utility called qmeu-img that will translate between all manner of disk image formats. An article on this process is at http://thedarkmaster.wordpress.com/2007/03/12/vmware-virtual-machine-to-virtual-box-conversion-how-to/

I recall in my head that I used qemu-img to roll multiple VMDKs into one, but I don't have that computer with me to retest the process. Even if I'm wrong, the article above includes a section that describes how to convert them with your VMWare tools.

I will suggest something totally different, we used it at work for many years ago on real computers and it worked perfect.

Boot both old and new machine on linux rescue Cd.

read the disk from one, and write it down to the other one, block by block, effectively copying the dist over the network.

You have to play around a little bit with the command line, but it worked so well that both machine complained about IP-conflict when they both booted :-) :-)

cat /dev/sda | ssh user@othermachine cat - > /dev/sda

This error occurs because VMware has a bug that uses the absolute path of the disk file in certain situations.

If you look at the top of that small *.vmdk file you'll likely see an incorrect absolute path to the original VMDK file that needs to be corrected.

Note: I am not sure this will be of any help to you, but you never know.

I found this link:http://www.ubuntugeek.com/howto-convert-vmware-image-to-virtualbox-image.html

ENJOY :-)