[et-mgmt-tools] VMware/qemu-kvm-?? migration

[Richard W.M. Jones]

On Tue, Jul 14, 2009 at 05:39:45PM -0400, Gene Czarcinski wrote:
> Is this the mailing list to ask about issues/problems migrating VMware guests 
> to run on qemu-kvm, etc.?
> 
> If not, please point me to an appropriate mailing list?

Yes this is good.

I've actually been playing with manual migration of guests from VMWare
recently.  This is what I do:

(1) Export the guest in OVF format (File -> Export -> Export OVF Template)

(2) Convert the *.vmdk file (disk image) into a raw file:

  qemu-img convert -f vmdk -O raw *.vmdk image.raw

(3) Boot the raw image using libvirt.  I create a libvirt
configuration by hand, but IIRC there is now a tool which does this
automatically.

Some problems: VMWare tools should be uninstalled from the original
guest.  Virtio drivers should be installed in the new guest (this is
very complex to do for existing guests, which is why we are writing
the virt-v2v tool to automate it).

The virt-v2v tool will be ready in a few weeks.  You can follow
progress on it here:

http://libguestfs.org

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Emerging Technologies, Red Hat  http://et.redhat.com/~rjones
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