OVF Import

[gbr]

Hi,

I'm currently a dissatisfied Citrix XenServer user, and I am testing Proxmox. I would like to import some of my XenServer VM's. The last forum post on OVF import said it would be around sometime late 2011.

Is OVF import possible? If not, is there a round about way (OVF->VMDK->ProxMox)?

Normally I would just bot Clonezilla and make a copy, but I just got a response from Citrix: "You can't boot a PV guest from CD." Any tips on moving XenServer VM's over would be appreciated.

Gerald

 

[mlanner]

You can relatively easily convert a .vmdk to .raw or .qcow (Proxmox). Look at the wiki for more details. The forum also includes some threads for how to go about it.

 

[gbr]

You can relatively easily convert a .vmdk to .raw or .qcow (Proxmox). Look at the wiki for more details. The forum also includes some threads for how to go about it.

Thanks for the response.

That would work great, except for getting it from ovf to vmdk. I don't know how to do that, and it's the only format Citrix XenServer will export

 

[mlanner]

I guess it would be a bit of a drag, but you could export to OVF, import into VMware workstation, creating the .vmdk and then converting it to .raw/.qcow. Potentially this could all be done on the same server. So, if you have some spare hardware around, it should be perfectly doable.

 

[gbr]

Okay, figured it out. A different Citrix employee responded and answered my question.

Clonezilla can boot from a CD. In XenCenter, select the VM menu VM->Start/Shutdown->Start in recovery Mode. Recovery mode bots the VM in HVM mode instead of PVM, and will boot from the CD.

Gerald

 

[xlnt]

I'm in the exact same situation. About to migrate from Citrix xenserver to proxmox. I had no problem at all booting windows VM's in xenserver with clonezilla making an image and the restore the image in a new VM in proxmox. That worked great. But as you mentioned Linux VM's in Xenserver wont boot from cd so it wont be so easy to migrate the linux VM's. But I think there is a simple solution to the problem.
1. Detach the disks from the VM to clone
2. Create a new VM in xenserver (using Other install media), attach the previously detached disks to this vm and boot the clonezilla live cd on it
3. Clone the disk/disks
4. Create new VM in proxmox, boot clonezilla and restore the image

The problem I have is that my linux VM wont boot in proxmox after this. Might have soemthing to do with the xen kernel or citrix drivers...

Would be nice to be able to migrate a xenserver linux VM to proxmox in an easy way.

 

[mir]

Hi,

I'm currently a dissatisfied Citrix XenServer user, and I am testing Proxmox. I would like to import some of my XenServer VM's. The last forum post on OVF import said it would be around sometime late 2011.

Is OVF import possible? If not, is there a round about way (OVF->VMDK->ProxMox)?

Normally I would just bot Clonezilla and make a copy, but I just got a response from Citrix: "You can't boot a PV guest from CD." Any tips on moving XenServer VM's over would be appreciated.

Gerald

The OVF file is simply a description of the virtual machine. You must have some vmdk file hanging around somewhere open the OVF file in a text editor and find the name and path of the vmdk file. When you have found this vmdk file converting is easy: qemu-img convert -O raw </path/to/file.vmdk> file.raw

 

[xlnt]

Okay, figured it out. A different Citrix employee responded and answered my question.

Clonezilla can boot from a CD. In XenCenter, select the VM menu VM->Start/Shutdown->Start in recovery Mode. Recovery mode bots the VM in HVM mode instead of PVM, and will boot from the CD.

Gerald

Thats was good information. Only the problem still is that the VM wont boot in proxmox...

 

[mir]

Thats was good information. Only the problem still is that the VM wont boot in proxmox...

Could you be a little more specific? Configuration and error messages, please!

 

[mir]

Thats was good information. Only the problem still is that the VM wont boot in proxmox...

Are your kernel inside the image or is the kernel loaded by the xen hypervisor? Show us the configuration file from xen.

If the kernel does not reside inside the image you will have to install the kernel and grub inside the image before transformation. See http://www.blog.turmair.de/2010/12/xen-to-kvm-or-physical-vmware-migration/

 

[gbr]

The .ovf file is quite large... big enough to hold the disk image. I'll do some more checking this week.

Gerald