Scenario: Trying to either prove or disprove to management that we can bring VMs from AWS to on-prem vCenter.
Conditions:
- AWS instances originated in AWS (they were not migrated from our on-prem to AWS), so standard AWS processes won't work per AWS restrictions on exporting instances.
- On-prem vCenter running 6.5, ESXi hosts running 6.5
- Followed process from here to create VMX and VMDK files from AWS instance: Import an Amazon EC2 Windows Instance into VMware Workstation
- Followed process from here to import to vCenter: Select a VMware Hosted Virtual Machine to Convert
- All AWS instances are Windows 2012 R2 or higher
Current State:
The two processes used above work pretty well, right up to the point where I power up the VM in my on-prem environment. The Windows VM just sits at the loading screen with a spinning "wheel" (don't know what else to call it - the small dots that spin around in a circle). The logs aren't very helpful, as they really only show the VM logs from the ESXi perspective, not the guest OS perspective. I've reviewed the resulting VMX file that was produced during the "export" process and nothing really jumped out at me, and I also compared it to a working VM (not from AWS). There were a lot of lines in the working VM that were not present in the AWS VM, and some lines in the AWS VM that were not present in the working VM. I also compared them after the vCenter registration with the same results, just more lines that were added to the AWS VMX after the VM was registered in my vCenter. I've tried to tweak some of the hardware settings (remove the floppy, add the CD drive, change RAM/CPU, etc.) with no changes to the outcome. I've also tried the import process on two different vCenter environments (normal vCenter and VXRail environment) with same results.
I'm attaching the pre-registered and post-registered VMX files if they can be useful. Any other information that I can provide that could shed some light on this, I'd be more than happy to provide.
