First post of 2024

My server is working again now! VMware killed the free version of ESXi (6.7) and my USB install of the hypervisor was somehow corrupted, but this left all of my VMs sitting safely (but inaccessible) inside my SSD. I had to use qemu-utils to access the filesystem on this drive since it was in a format that only ESXi would recognize, then convert my .vmdk files to .qcow2 files.

I ended up switching to Proxmox as my hypervisor of choice because it seemed like it would be the logical choice. I got my .qcow2 files ready and put them on a hard drive and installed Proxmox to a hard drive to avoid any kind of flash corruption in the future, while I planned on putting my VMs that require more performance on my SSD once I was absolutely certain I had copies of my virtual machines. Proxmox to ESXi seemed to be a fairly seamless switch.

Not all things with computers are seamless!

In the end this was a process that took my entire spring break because of having to convert files overnight, then transfer them during the day, only to see that the transfer had failed partially or fully. I was eventually able to retain all my data (thankfully) through trial and error and would not wish a corrupted hypervisor USB upon my worst enemy. I have learned how to navigate Proxmox and use it to create datastores, containers, and VMs and I am very excited to learn more about this feature-rich hypervisor. I also set up a VPN service inside of an unprivileged container so that I can minimize how many ports I forward on my network while still being able to connect securely to everything I need to manage this thing remotely.