I’ll also show you, how you can download the VMDK and OVH files (image of the Linux server) directly from ESXi, which can later be imported into VirtualBox if that your preferred way of running the virtual copy of the Linux server. Once done, the process of conversion from physical to virtual will start and finish, and I’ll show you how you can execute the newly created virtual image of your Linux server from VMware ESXi. Then we’ll use VMware vCenter Converter and in it configure the access to our physical Linux server, as well as access to VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) server running virtually using VMware player. The following steps will be taken to convert existing physical Linux server to a virtual image. We’ll first install VMware player onto which we’ll install ESXi image. VMware vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi ISO) image (Includes VMware Tools).VMware vCenter Converter Standalone (free download).VMware Workstation 12.5 Player for Windows 64-bit.IP address and credentials for your Linux PC/Server.Windows PC (I’ve used Windows 10 64bit) with enough resources (CPU/RAM/HDD) to create an image of your Linux PC or Linux Server.Thus the reason for this article, hopefully, it’ll help someone. Recently I needed to convert my physical CentOS Linux 7.3 server to a virtual image that I can quickly run from either VMware Workstation Player or VirtualBox (or keep as a backup that can be easily switched on as a copy of the physical server). I’ve kept searching the Internet, but only to find that the instructions were either too old or do not provide a proper step by step guide on how to go about this process.

Install linux server on virtualbox