Nutanix Prism Central has a ova Export/Import feature which makes it possible to export VMs as ova and import it into other environments. I share some tips when migrating VMs from AHV to ESXi using ova exported by Prism Central.
1. About Prism Central OVA export (AHV to ESXi)
The ova feature was added to Prism Central at the version of pc.2020.8. VMs on AHV can be exported via PC like below. (you can download it)
The exported VMs (ova) also can be imported into ESXi via vSphere Client.
I think people who tried to import ova into ESXi were faced with some technical difficulties. For example, unable to read vDisk when powered on, screen go frozen and uncontrollable.
I attempted several method (AHV to ESXi) and finally managed to make it works on ESXi. Please continue to read, you may find some tips for ova import.
2. Tips for OVA import (AHV to ESXi)
If you are faced with the issues I mentioned above, try following things:
▽Open VM Option and General Options, modify Guest OS Family and Guest OS Version to the appropriate values. These values were set as "Other" and "Other (32-bit)" right after importing ova for some reason.
▽Open Virtual Harware and SCSI controller, select "LSI Logic SAS".
"LSI Logic Parallel" was selected right after importing ova even though it's unsupported for Windows these days.
Then power on and open the console. For the first boot on ESXi, the mouse pointer is hard to control because VMware Tools were not installed yet.
Use keyboad and install VMware Tools, then reboot it. You can use the VM now.
Hope it will be useful for you. Let's enjoy Nutanix Xperience.
▽Tested Environment
export from: AOS 6.5.1.5 AHV 20201105.30417 Prism Central pc.2022.6
import into(1): vCenter 7.0 U3g 20150588, ESXi 7.0 U3f 20036589
import into(2): vCenter 6.7 U3 14368073, ESXi 6.7 U3 14320388
