[ale] [EXTERNAL] Re: Clonezilla?

[Allen Beddingfield]

Thanks.  Unfortunately, VergeIO and Nutanix really aren't options for us, as fiber channel storage is a requirement, and we aren't interested in migrating to hyperconverged infrastructure.  I have heard quite a few nice things about VergeIO, though.
The migration tool to XCP-ng is great - point to the VCenter server, select the VM, pick a target, and it just pulls it across the network, and powers it down on the source.  For Linux VMs, you have to add in the xen drivers beforehand (we drop a config file in /etc/dracut.conf.d that includes them, and run dracut -f).  
I don't anticipate a lot of need to go TO VMware, but just needed to work out a solution that could be used.
Allen B.
--
Allen Beddingfield
Systems Engineer
Office of Information Technology
The University of Alabama
Office 205-348-2251
allen at ua.edu


________________________________________
From: Ale <ale-bounces at ale.org> on behalf of James Taylor via Ale <ale at ale.org>
Sent: Thursday, October 23, 2025 9:58 AM
To: ale at ale.org
Cc: James Taylor
Subject: Re: [ale] [EXTERNAL] Re: Clonezilla?

I would concur.
I have done a lot of vm cross migrations, and unless you have a builtin migration tool, then it is actually much simpler to use command line tools or scripts.
The only one I've personally migrated that way is moving from vmware to VergeIO (a kvm based hypervisor) virtualiztion.
Beautiful nearly zero downtime solution.
My current production is using Harvester with Rancher, and I just used a one step qemu command line migration to .raw for the that. Harvester is KVM based, so it is pretty straightforwad.

I've experienced a lot of citrix (XCP-NG basis) to VMware, and it has been a multistep nightmare.

Maybe not as bad going the other way, but I haven't had need to try it.

>>> DJPfulio--- via Ale <ale at ale.org> 10/23/2025, 10:39 AM >>>
On 10/23/25 09:25, Allen Beddingfield via Ale wrote:
> I was trying to find a "migrate across the network" solution to go
> from XCP-ng to VMware that an entry level Windows sysadmin could do,
> without having to have ssh and sftp access to the infrastructure on
> both sides, or to understand how that works.

Windows? Can't help. I've moved a few MS-Windows machines between VM hosts, but their license checks always broke when changing hypervisor technologies so I had to reinstall. OTOH, I have migrated MS-Windows running under KVM from Core2 Duo, to Core2Quad, to Core i5, to Ryzen 5000, but I've always used the qcow2 file format which makes it pretty easy. Migrated a bunch of Linux VMs too, but those were all trivial in comparison. The only issue I had was when the motherboard model of the prior VM changed and the license check failed. That's when sysprep.exe is needed to unload all the drivers just before the physical migration to the new VM host (and newer faked motherboard hardware).

Used Xen from 2008-2011 in production. Same for VMware vSphere. Best choice I ever made was to switch both to KVM-based hypervisors. XCP-ng certainly provides management with the "cheese" factor. That's certain. Lots of pretty point-n-click stuff. A few times a year, I had some VMs refuse to boot under Xen, so I'd have to restore to a snapshot made just prior to the updates and wait for OS changes to make to the client machines. I was using paravirtual VMs for many Linux VMs, so some of that was self-inflicted. The Windows VMs seemed to stutter in a way I could feel. Haven't seen that under KVM, ever, but it easily could have been an overtaxed Core2 Duo CPU struggling with the added demands of a HW-VM and Windows not being tuned for running under VMs at the time. Windows always took more CPU than the same workload under a Linux VM.

I would give up on the idea of a noob Windows Admin doing these things. Expect to train 2-3 people in the WinAdmin group on the stuff they need to know and let them help the others. Let them schedule migration themselves. I'd get as far away from that as I could.

Sorry for babbling. Maybe 1 tiny part will be helpful.
_______________________________________________
Ale mailing list
Ale at ale.org
https://us-west-2.protection.sophos.com?d=ale.org&u=aHR0cHM6Ly9tYWlsLmFsZS5vcmcvbWFpbG1hbi9saXN0aW5mby9hbGU=&i=NjNjODRjNjNlNGJiYjI0YTFlODE3NGI4&t=WURFRm5tTitkSHI4U1ZwemZnemUwM3lobndBWHAxa3NFdVVZMzdKL1NEZz0=&h=ed98c37e76ba412ea49ea5df026eb90e&s=AVNPUEhUT0NFTkNSWVBUSVYdBQ9j-wR-KkxEPPIPFbQnjFT3tdStWDhWBd8Fyu51Wg
See JOBS, ANNOUNCE and SCHOOLS lists at
https://us-west-2.protection.sophos.com?d=ale.org&u=aHR0cDovL21haWwuYWxlLm9yZy9tYWlsbWFuL2xpc3RpbmZv&i=NjNjODRjNjNlNGJiYjI0YTFlODE3NGI4&t=WXN1dVQwSXRuYklNSUUyeW5ZdnowL0g5azcyVkRhTWxwZWhCT0hpdmFDTT0=&h=ed98c37e76ba412ea49ea5df026eb90e&s=AVNPUEhUT0NFTkNSWVBUSVYdBQ9j-wR-KkxEPPIPFbQnjFT3tdStWDhWBd8Fyu51Wg