During tests of Vmware ESXi VM recovery on Proxmox 8.4 I noticed that the Veeam recovered Vmware VMs are not bootable out of the box.
It was fairly quickly narrowed down to Veeam replacing Vmware virtual HW with alternatives.
As we haven't installed VirtIO drivers in advance, the Windows VM (UEFI boot) simply would boot as it was missing drivers.
By exchanging the assigned virtual HW in PVE with the same as Vmware VM had in the first place, the VM booted without issues and any additional software.
* SCSI with Vmware Paravirtual
* network with VMXNET3
* added back vTPM
* display set to Default instead of "VMware compatible" (did work thou without change, still why guess what "default" setting implies)
If there are any plans to support SureBackup on PVE in the future, this Virtual HW replacement behavior will make it harder also.
As all these virtual HW emulations exists in Proxmox, I see no reason for replacing them with anything other.
If it is due to compatibility reason with older Proxmox, then there should be a selection button to switch virtual HW to proxmox corresponding.
Also, removing the vTPM without a hint/warning is also a bad behaviour. If it cannot be restored, Veeam should warn that the vTPM content might not be correct but functional.
The other virtual hardware being removed is less problematic as it is seldom used, but should also stay if possible (serial port, PS2 controller etc..)
It was fairly quickly narrowed down to Veeam replacing Vmware virtual HW with alternatives.
As we haven't installed VirtIO drivers in advance, the Windows VM (UEFI boot) simply would boot as it was missing drivers.
By exchanging the assigned virtual HW in PVE with the same as Vmware VM had in the first place, the VM booted without issues and any additional software.
* SCSI with Vmware Paravirtual
* network with VMXNET3
* added back vTPM
* display set to Default instead of "VMware compatible" (did work thou without change, still why guess what "default" setting implies)
If there are any plans to support SureBackup on PVE in the future, this Virtual HW replacement behavior will make it harder also.
As all these virtual HW emulations exists in Proxmox, I see no reason for replacing them with anything other.
If it is due to compatibility reason with older Proxmox, then there should be a selection button to switch virtual HW to proxmox corresponding.
Also, removing the vTPM without a hint/warning is also a bad behaviour. If it cannot be restored, Veeam should warn that the vTPM content might not be correct but functional.
The other virtual hardware being removed is less problematic as it is seldom used, but should also stay if possible (serial port, PS2 controller etc..)
Statistics: Posted by dejan.ilic — May 06, 2025 9:14 am
