Migrating Parallels 3 / 4 to VirtualBox

So, I decided to switch over to VirtualBox for Desktop Virtualiziation under OS X. This some advantages over my old software, Parallels Desktop:

• it is open source and thus it basically means I do not have to pay for it
• it is available under all major OS platforms
• it can use the widely spread VMware disk format (vmdk)

With the current 2.1 release it finally supports bridging on OS X, which was the last reason, I could not use it (I need bridging to have local virtual test clients in a network).

But all my old virtual machines are in the Parallels format, what now? At first, it seems to be a major downpoint, because VirtualBox does not include any sort of migration assistant and the wiki page on migrating windows is kind of useless ("It is also assumed that a suitable virtual disk image (either VDI or VMDK) is already present") - No, I do not have a disk image in VDI or VMDK!

Luckily Parallels' commercial competitor VMware Fusion offers to import Parallels VM up to version 3. Unfortunately I have been switching to Parallels 4 some time ago and the new version has a new disk image format as well...

Because VirtualBox can read VMware disk images, one can import Parallels VMs in Fusion and then use these disk images in VirtualBox!

For Parallels 3 -> VirtualBox that means:

• Boot up your Parallels VMs a last time and uninstall Parallels Tools
• Shut down (this is essential, Fusion will complain about suspended Parallels VMs and won't succeed) your VM
• Fire up Fusion and import your Parallels VM (to be found under ~/Library/Parallels/name_of_your_VM/name_of_your_VM.pvs) into a directory of your choice (preferrably into ~/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines/ )
  
• do not boot directly into it with Fusion
• open Finder and navigate to the path, you imported the VM into (e.g. ~/Library/Application Support/VMware Fusion/Virtual Machines/)
• you should see your newly imported VM, right-click and select "show package contents"
• voilá, you have your VMware disk images in VMDK format
• copy/move them to your VirtualBox path (~/Library/VirtualBox/HardDisks)
• quit Fusion, start VirtualBox, add a new VM
• click on "existing" when at the hard disk selection dialog and select your imported VMDK disk image
• Finish the wizard and boot up your new VM
• if your have Windows XP as a guest OS, it WON'T respond to your keyboard / mouse commands
• simply reset the VM
• now, you should have a usable VM in VirtualBox!

Usually it is then a good idea, to login with administrator rights and install the VirtualBox guest additions, and let windows determine its virtually new hardware (pun intended).

I'm currently working on Parallels 4 -> VirtualBox, so far the most promising way seems to be:

• install VMware Converter and convert the running VM to a VMware one and then using the above steps