ESX VM image file and XEN

SUSE Product Topics SLES Virtualization
1

Hi,

Can a ESX virtual machine image file (server.vmdk) be loaded as a Suse11sp1 XEN vertual machine. If this is possible, are there any issues.

Thanks
John

2

On Sun, 29 Jul 2012 08:14:01 +0000, John Gill wrote:
[color=blue]

Hi,

Can a ESX virtual machine image file (server.vmdk) be loaded as a
Suse11sp1 XEN vertual machine. If this is possible, are there any
issues.[/color]

As I understand it, XEN supports OVF, so you can use VMware converter to
convert a VMware setup to OFV and import that into XEN.

I’ve not done this myself but I have converted VMware workstation images
to run on VirtualBox and that’s worked pretty well.

The issues I ran into were mostly driver related - since the virtual
machine presents different virtual hardware, you’ll need to install
whatever guest OS tools/drivers are necessary once you import the machine
into XEN. If the guest does activation based on hardware configuration
(ie, Windows for example), you will probably have to re-activate the
system.

Jim

–
Jim Henderson, CNA6, CDE, CNI, LPIC-1, CLA10, CLP10
Novell Knowledge Partner

3

[QUOTE=John_Gill;5875]Hi,

Can a ESX virtual machine image file (server.vmdk) be loaded as a Suse11sp1 XEN vertual machine. If this is possible, are there any issues.

Thanks
John[/QUOTE]

It’s been a long time since I tried it, but Xen has/had a built in vmdk block device driver (search for tap:vmdk).

These days I use something like Symantec Livestate to switch from VMware to Xen as it also handles the needed storage driver switch gracefully. Very easy product to use, make an image - place an image. but the tap:vmdk: could do the trick. Again, no idea in what state that’s in these days.

Cheers,
Willem

4

The solution was fairly simple in the end. The ESX VM image file (.vmdk)
was converted to a .img file that I could then use in XEN as a new Fully
Virtualized VM. The command is "qemu-img convert myfile-flat.vmdk -O raw
/var/lib/xen/images/vm_name/vm_name.img.

The rest is history …

Regards
John

5

[QUOTE=John_Gill;6288]The solution was fairly simple in the end. The ESX VM image file (.vmdk)
was converted to a .img file that I could then use in XEN as a new Fully
Virtualized VM. The command is "qemu-img convert myfile-flat.vmdk -O raw
/var/lib/xen/images/vm_name/vm_name.img.

The rest is history …

Regards
John[/QUOTE]

Cool… also an old method that still works as it seems :slight_smile:

thanks for posting back!

Cheers,
Willem