Migrate VMware to KVM

[bjrosen]

Is there any means of converting a VMware VM into a KVM VM? If there is no direct way is there a KVM tool that will convert a running system into a KVM VM like VMware has? If that exists it would be possible to run it on a VMware VM to produce a KVM VM?

[sideways]

for vmware 3 & 4 you can use qemu-img, eg

yum install qemu-img
qemu-img convert vmware.vmdk -O qcow2 qemu.img

[bjrosen]

How do I load the image into KVM? I tried doing a restore machine but it gives me an image magic error.

[sideways]

Create a new VM, , then add the image as "managed other existing storage" instead of creating a new image (in fact I notice you can add an existing vmdk image so no need to run qemu-img manually)

[bjrosen]

I've tried it with a Win2K VM and an XP VM. The WIn2K VM tries goes into a boot loop and eventually crashes. I tried removing VMware tools but that made it worse. The XP VM gets no where. It says booting from hard drive and then just sits there.

Are there KVM drivers that I could install while running the VMs under VMware?

[sideways]

I think you need to rerun the Windows setup CD and select Repair option.

There's a howto on the kvm site, but it's a bit muddled:

http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/How_To..._Vmware_To_KVM

I'm not sure what you meant by "kvm drivers", kvm provides the virtualisation layer via /dev/kvm, the hardware devices emulation is done via qemu, windows should support the devices natively.

[bjrosen]

I mean the equivalent of VMware tools.

[kmiller]

Has anyone managed to get this to work yet?

I have F11, and have fresh installed vm's working just fine, but can't get the qemu-img version 0.10.5 to work.

I've tried these syntax's;

qemu-img convert -O qcow2 Win2K.vmdk Win2K.qcow2
qemu-img convert Win2K.vmdk Win2K.qcow2
qemu-img convert Win2K.vmdk -O qcow2 Win2K.qcow2

I get the error qemu-img: Could not open 'Win2K.qcow2' all the time.

I created an image just in case;
# qemu-img create -f qcow2 Win2K.qcow2 4G
Formatting 'Win2K.qcow2', fmt=qcow2, size=4194304 kB

Still no success, am I doing something wrong?

Thanks

Keith

[beaker_]

It should have worked. But it gave me a hard time to so I just booted vmplayer and virtual machine manager with a live cd. From there I used dd to duplicated the drive on a network share and then wrote it back into virtual machine manager. Seamed like I was going to the moon and back but I'm not beating on it today so it's something to consider.

[sideways]

Do you have enough free space in the directory?

[kmiller]

Thanks Beaker, wow! That is a journey all right! If I can't get it to work by the weekend, then that's what I'll do.

Good question Sideways! This system does have more than ample disk, but I've also been running the command as root, changing file permissions and ownership. Moved the file from one disk to another, really running out of options.

Looks like I may need to file a bug at this rate.

[sideways]

ensure the vmdk file is recognised correctly (not as 'raw' format for example)

qemu-img info Win2K.vmdk

if so, try specifying formats and full path explicitly

qemu-img convert -f vmdk Win2K.vmdk -O qcow2 /home/user/Win2K.qcow2

(You're not using fat32 I hope, check free space and filesystems with 'df -hT')

[beaker_]

You might be fighting selinux so check the file context. Default img location is /var/lib/virtlib/images.

I tried again on a clean install and it went without a hitch so I might revisit that box soon. I'm hoping it was one of those thing which refuse to work till the next day.

Late edit: If you have multiple files (-1.vmdk, -2.vmdk) then try converting into a single file firt. i.e., MyMachine.vmdk. I just converted dimdim's without a hitch.

[kmiller]

Hi Sideways,

Yes, the file is being seen as raw, is that my problem? Google fails me on this

# qemu-img info /home/<user>/vmware/Win2K/Win2K-000001.vmdk
image: /home/<user>/vmware/Win2K/Win2K-000001.vmdk
file format: raw
virtual size: 0 (0 bytes)
disk size: 4.0K

I've tried;

qemu-img convert -f vmdk /home/<user>/vmware/Win2K/Win2K-000001.vmdk -O qcow2 /home/<user>/Win2K.qcow2
qemu-img: Could not open '/home/<user>/vmware/Win2K/Win2K-000001.vmdk'

The host system is F11 with ext4 and the image "should" be NTFS.

Hi beaker, I have so many scars and wounds from SElinux its always disabled on my systems

You said

If you have multiple files (-1.vmdk, -2.vmdk) then try converting into a single file firt. i.e., MyMachine.vmdk.

How did you do that? The file list from the directory is;

vmware-0.log
vmware-1.log
vmware-2.log
vmware.log
Win2K-000001-s001.vmdk
Win2K-000001-s002.vmdk
Win2K-000001-s003.vmdk
Win2K-000001-s004.vmdk
Win2K-000001-s005.vmdk
Win2K-000001.vmdk
Win2K.nvram
Win2K-s001.vmdk
Win2K-s002.vmdk
Win2K-s003.vmdk
Win2K-s004.vmdk
Win2K-s005.vmdk
Win2K-Snapshot1.vmem
Win2K-Snapshot1.vmsn
Win2K.vmdk
Win2K.vmsd
Win2K.vmx
Win2K.vmxf

Am I missing a step here?

I looked at the vmware.log, and it says the vmware was version=6.5.0. These vmware images have been migrated from every release of Fedora since FC6! and I would really like to avoid vmware and move to kvm, but my window of opportunity is running out.

Thank you beaker and sideways for all your help, I really appreciate it guys!

[Gödel]

In the man page for qemu-img it says:

"vmdk"
VMware 3 and 4 compatible image format.

so looks like Vmware version 6.5 images can't be converted.

Looks like you'll have to do something like beaker suggested, boot up the vmware image (in VMware), connect to some other external shared drive, and use dd to write the whole disk image in raw format. Then rerun' qemu-img convert' on the raw image.