Moving a virtual machine from VMWare Fusion to VMWare Server at node.mu

Moving a virtual machine from VMWare Fusion to VMWare Server

5 Comments Published August 2nd, 2009 in Technology

I am running VMWare Fusion 2.0.x at home, and VMWare Server 2.0.x on my Ubuntu workstation at work. I wanted to move a virtual machine created on VMWare Fusion to VMWare Server.

Some gotchas that I’ve come across:

64-bit and VT mode

64-bit virtual machines are only supported on CPUs that have VT mode.

Fusion-only feature not handled gracefully by Server

If your .vmx file has the following line, remove it.

serial0.fileType = "thinprint"

VMWare Server does not support this feature, and crashes when you try to import the virtual machine.

Networking

After importing the virtual machine, when you power it on for the first time, VMWare will ask you whether you moved it or copied it. Tell VMWare that you moved it. Otherwise, you will have to manually update the ethernet adapter settings to get networking back up.

5 Responses to “Moving a virtual machine from VMWare Fusion to VMWare Server”

Feed for this Entry Trackback Address

1 David Aug 20th, 2009 at 3:27 am

Thank you! This article helped me very much.
2 Michael Cox Aug 31st, 2009 at 1:39 am

Perfect! I couldn’t figure out why my VMs couldn’t be added to inventory; that simple line

serial0.fileType = “thinprint”

was the problem. Thanks for the blog!

Now if I can only get the remote console plug-in to install in Firefox 3.5 on my Mac I’ll be set. So far, no good.
3 Michael Cox Aug 31st, 2009 at 3:45 am

I can’t my network adapter to connect. It lets me change the setting, but just keeps the red & white X on it – never connects.
4 Andrew Dec 1st, 2009 at 2:30 pm

Thanks! This advice was incredibly helpful.
5 diogo Feb 9th, 2010 at 9:57 pm

Sorry do you anything about the inverse i have a Vmachine 32bits from a Vmware Server 2.1 (Linux version) that i want to import to my mac (Vmware Fusion 3.0.1) . Any experience on that ?

node.mu