Virtual machines, vmware and VirtualBox

A while ago I was migrating from VMware Server (the free version) to VirtualBox (which is also free). In order to convert my vmdk to vdi I started out using this guide.

It is nowadays possible to directly use the vmdk in VirtualBox, but for some reason I wanted all my disks as vdi.

Some of my drives where devided into 2GB chunks. First I created a single file out of them using:

vmware-vdiskmanager -r vm.vmdk -t 0 hardrive-name.vmdk

(vm.vmdk is my source disk and harddrive-name is the destination disk)

Then I installed qemu (sudo apt-get install qemu)

..in order to convert the disk to a bin file (I figured it’s always good to know how to do this in case I want a hardware drive later on..):

qemu-img convert harddrive-name.vmdk raw-file.bin

And then to convert to vdi I use VBoxManage:

VBoxManage convertdd raw-file.bin new-file.vdi

Tadaa.. Then I created a new virtual machine using VirtualBox. Since I’m speaking of virtual boxes  anyway, here are some notes-to-self about creating it:

1. Create the network adapters, I use one to bridge my wireless and one to bridge my LAN. (TODO: Learn how NAT is working in VirtualBox)
1. I have a DELL PRECISION M90 and the “Advanced” “Adapter type” “INTEL PRO/1000 MT Desktop” works better for me.
2. Share a folder. I share the same folder in all my virtual machines and has it setup as a network harddrive in windows. Works like a charm! One of the reasons I migrate from VMware, there I use ftp.. (with my host as ftp-server).
3. Add the USB-device filters I want.

[Update]

This did not work, my vm was not bootable. To be continued…

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