Ubuntu Manpage: virt-v2v - Convert a guest to use KVM

Provided by: virt-v2v_2.4.0-2build4_amd64

NAME

       virt-v2v - Convert a guest to use KVM

SYNOPSIS

        virt-v2v [-i mode] [other -i* options]
                 [-o mode] [other -o* options]
                 [guest|filename]

DESCRIPTION

Virt-v2v converts a single guest from a foreign hypervisor to run on KVM. It can read
Linux and Windows guests running on VMware, Xen, Hyper-V and some other hypervisors, and
convert them to KVM managed by libvirt, OpenStack, oVirt, Red Hat Virtualisation (RHV) or
several other targets. It can modify the guest to make it bootable on KVM and install
virtio drivers so it will run quickly.

There is also a companion front-end called virt-p2v(1) which comes as an ISO, CD or PXE
image that can be booted on physical machines to virtualize those machines (physical to
virtual, or p2v).

To estimate the disk space needed before conversion, see virt-v2v-inspector(1).

For in-place conversion, there is a separate tool called virt-v2v-in-place(1).

Input and Output
You normally run virt-v2v with several -i* options controlling the input mode and also
several -o* options controlling the output mode. In this sense, "input" refers to the
source foreign hypervisor such as VMware, and "output" refers to the target KVM-based
management system such as oVirt or OpenStack.

The input and output sides of virt-v2v are separate and unrelated. Virt-v2v can read from
any input and write to any output. Therefore these sides of virt-v2v are documented
separately in this manual.

Virt-v2v normally copies from the input to the output, called "copying mode". In this
case the source guest is always left unchanged. In-place conversions may be done using
virt-v2v-in-place(1).

Other virt-v2v topics
virt-v2v-support(1) — Supported hypervisors, virtualization management systems, guests.

virt-v2v-input-vmware(1) — Input from VMware.

virt-v2v-input-xen(1) — Input from Xen.

virt-v2v-output-local(1) — Output to local files or local libvirt.

virt-v2v-output-rhv(1) — Output to oVirt or RHV.

virt-v2v-output-openstack(1) — Output to OpenStack.

virt-v2v-release-notes-1.42(1) — Release notes for 1.42 release.

virt-v2v-release-notes-2.0(1) — Release notes for 2.0 release.

virt-v2v-release-notes-2.2(1) — Release notes for 2.2 release.

virt-v2v-release-notes-2.4(1) — Release notes for 2.4 release.

EXAMPLES

Convert from VMware vCenter server to local libvirt
You have a VMware vCenter server called "vcenter.example.com", a datacenter called
"Datacenter", and an ESXi hypervisor called "esxi". You want to convert a guest called
"vmware_guest" to run locally under libvirt.

virt-v2v -ic vpx://vcenter.example.com/Datacenter/esxi vmware_guest

In this case you will most likely have to run virt-v2v as "root", since it needs to talk
to the system libvirt daemon and copy the guest disks to /var/lib/libvirt/images.

For more information see virt-v2v-input-vmware(1).

Convert from VMware to RHV/oVirt
This is the same as the previous example, except you want to send the guest to a RHV Data
Domain using the RHV REST API. Guest network interface(s) are connected to the target
network called "ovirtmgmt".

virt-v2v -ic vpx://vcenter.example.com/Datacenter/esxi vmware_guest \
-o rhv-upload -oc https://ovirt-engine.example.com/ovirt-engine/api \
-os ovirt-data -op /tmp/ovirt-admin-password -of raw \
-oo rhv-cafile=/tmp/ca.pem --bridge ovirtmgmt

In this case the host running virt-v2v acts as a conversion server.

For more information see virt-v2v-output-rhv(1).

Convert from ESXi hypervisor over SSH to local libvirt
You have an ESXi hypervisor called "esxi.example.com" with SSH access enabled. You want
to convert from VMFS storage on that server to a local file.

virt-v2v \
-i vmx -it ssh \
"ssh://root@esxi.example.com/vmfs/volumes/datastore1/guest/guest.vmx" \
-o local -os /var/tmp

The guest must not be running. Virt-v2v would not need to be run as root in this case.

For more information about converting from VMX files see virt-v2v-input-vmware(1).

Convert disk image to OpenStack
Given a disk image from another hypervisor that you want to convert to run on OpenStack
(only KVM-based OpenStack is supported), you can run virt-v2v inside an OpenStack VM
(called "v2v-vm" below), and do:

virt-v2v -i disk disk.img -o openstack -oo server-id=v2v-vm

See virt-v2v-output-openstack(1).

Convert disk image to disk image
Given a disk image from another hypervisor that you want to convert to run on KVM, you
have two options. The simplest way is to try:

virt-v2v -i disk disk.img -o local -os /var/tmp

where virt-v2v guesses everything about the input disk.img and (in this case) writes the
converted result to /var/tmp.

A more complex method is to write some libvirt XML describing the input guest (if you can
get the source hypervisor to provide you with libvirt XML, then so much the better). You
can then do:

virt-v2v -i libvirtxml guest-domain.xml -o local -os /var/tmp

Since guest-domain.xml contains the path(s) to the guest disk image(s) you do not need to
specify the name of the disk image on the command line.

To convert a local disk image and immediately boot it in local qemu, do:

virt-v2v -i disk disk.img -o qemu -os /var/tmp -oo qemu-boot

OPTIONS

--help
Display help.

--bandwidth bps
--bandwidth-file filename
Some input methods are able to limit the network bandwidth they will use statically or
dynamically. In the first variant this sets the bandwidth limit statically in bits
per second. Formats like "10M" may be used (meaning 10 megabits per second).

In the second variant the bandwidth is limited dynamically from the content of the
file (also in bits per second, in the same formats supported by the first variant).
You may use both parameters together, meaning: first limit to a static rate, then you
can create the file while virt-v2v is running to adjust the rate dynamically.

This is only supported for:

• input from Xen

• input from VMware VMX when using the SSH transport method

• input from VDDK

• -i libvirtxml when using HTTP or HTTPS disks

• input from VMware vCenter server

The options are silently ignored for other input methods.

-b ...
--bridge ...
See --network below.

--block-driver virtio-blk
--block-driver virtio-scsi
When choosing a block driver for Windows guests, prefer "virtio-blk" or "virtio-scsi".
The default is "virtio-blk".

Note this has no effect for Linux guests at the moment. That may be added in future.

--colors
--colours
Use ANSI colour sequences to colourize messages. This is the default when the output
is a tty. If the output of the program is redirected to a file, ANSI colour sequences
are disabled unless you use this option.

--compressed
This is the same as -oo compressed.

--echo-keys
When prompting for keys and passphrases, virt-v2v normally turns echoing off so you
cannot see what you are typing. If you are not worried about Tempest attacks and
there is no one else in the room you can specify this flag to see what you are typing.

Note this options only applies to keys and passphrases for encrypted devices and
partitions, not for passwords used to connect to remote servers.

-i disk
Set the input method to disk.

In this mode you can read a virtual machine disk image with no metadata. virt-v2v
tries to guess the best default metadata. This is usually adequate but you can get
finer control (eg. of memory and vCPUs) by using -i libvirtxml instead. Only guests
that use a single disk can be imported this way.

-i libvirt
Set the input method to libvirt. This is the default.

In this mode you have to specify a libvirt guest name or UUID on the command line.
You may also specify a libvirt connection URI (see -ic).

See "Starting the libvirt system instance" below.

-i libvirtxml
Set the input method to libvirtxml.

In this mode you have to pass a libvirt XML file on the command line. This file is
read in order to get metadata about the source guest (such as its name, amount of
memory), and also to locate the input disks. See "Minimal XML for -i libvirtxml
option" below.

-i local
This is the same as -i disk.

-i ova
Set the input method to ova.

In this mode you can read a VMware ova file. Virt-v2v will read the ova manifest file
and check the vmdk volumes for validity (checksums) as well as analyzing the ovf file,
and then convert the guest. See virt-v2v-input-vmware(1).

-i vmx
Set the input method to vmx.

In this mode you can read a VMware vmx file directly or over SSH. This is useful when
VMware VMs are stored on an NFS server which you can mount directly, or where you have
access by SSH to an ESXi hypervisor. See virt-v2v-input-vmware(1).

-ic libvirtURI
Specify a libvirt connection URI to use when reading the guest. This is only used
when -i libvirt.

Only local libvirt connections, VMware vCenter connections, or RHEL 5 Xen remote
connections can be used. Other remote libvirt connections will not work in general.

See also virt-v2v-input-vmware(1), virt-v2v-input-xen(1).

-if format
For -i disk only, this specifies the format of the input disk image. For other input
methods you should specify the input format in the metadata.

-io OPTION=VALUE
Set input option(s) related to the current input mode or transport. To display short
help on what options are available you can use:

virt-v2v -it vddk -io "?"

-io vddk-libdir=LIBDIR
Set the VDDK library directory. This directory should contain subdirectories called
include, lib64 etc., but do not include lib64 actually in the parameter.

In most cases this parameter is required when using the -it vddk (VDDK) transport.
See virt-v2v-input-vmware(1) for details.

-io vddk-thumbprint=xx:xx:xx:...
Set the thumbprint of the remote VMware server.

This parameter is required when using the -it vddk (VDDK) transport. See
virt-v2v-input-vmware(1) for details.

-io vddk-config=FILENAME
-io vddk-cookie=COOKIE
-io vddk-nfchostport=PORT
-io vddk-port=PORT
-io vddk-snapshot=SNAPSHOT-MOREF
-io vddk-transports=MODE:MODE:...
When using VDDK mode, these options are passed unmodified to the nbdkit(1) VDDK
plugin. Please refer to nbdkit-vddk-plugin(1). Do not use these options unless you
know what you are doing. These are all optional.

-ip filename
Supply a file containing a password to be used when connecting to the target
hypervisor. If this is omitted then the input hypervisor may ask for the password
interactively. Note the file should contain the whole password, without any trailing
newline, and for security the file should have mode 0600 so that others cannot read
it.

-it ssh
When using -i vmx, this enables the ssh transport. See virt-v2v-input-vmware(1).

-it vddk
Use VMware VDDK as a transport to copy the input disks. See virt-v2v-input-vmware(1).
If you use this parameter then you may need to use other -io vddk* options to specify
how to connect through VDDK.

--key SELECTOR
Specify a key for LUKS, to automatically open a LUKS device when using the inspection.

--key NAME:key:KEY_STRING
--key UUID:key:KEY_STRING
--key all:key:KEY_STRING
"NAME" is the libguestfs device name (eg. "/dev/sda1"). "UUID" is the device
UUID. "all" means try the key against any encrypted device.

Use the specified "KEY_STRING" as passphrase.

--key NAME:file:FILENAME
--key UUID:file:FILENAME
--key all:file:FILENAME
Read the passphrase from FILENAME.

--key NAME:clevis
--key UUID:clevis
--key all:clevis
Attempt passphrase-less unlocking for the device with Clevis, over the network.
Please refer to "ENCRYPTED DISKS" in guestfs(3) for more information on network-
bound disk encryption (NBDE).

Note that if any such option is present on the command line, QEMU user networking
will be automatically enabled for the libguestfs appliance.

--keys-from-stdin
Read key or passphrase parameters from stdin. The default is to try to read
passphrases from the user by opening /dev/tty.

If there are multiple encrypted devices then you may need to supply multiple keys on
stdin, one per line.

Note --keys-from-stdin only applies to keys and passphrases for encrypted devices and
partitions, not for passwords used to connect to remote servers.

--mac aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff:network:out
--mac aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff:bridge:out
Map source NIC MAC address to a network or bridge.

See "Networks and bridges" below.

--mac aa:bb:cc:dd:ee:ff:ip:ipaddr[,gw[,len[,ns,ns,...]]]
Force a particular interface (controlled by its MAC address) to have a static IP
address after boot.

The fields in the parameter are: "ipaddr" is the IP address. "gw" is the optional
gateway IP address. "len" is the subnet mask length (an integer). The final
parameters are zero or more nameserver IP addresses.

This option can be supplied zero or more times.

You only need to use this option for certain broken guests such as Windows which are
unable to preserve MAC to static IP address mappings automatically. You don't need to
use it if Windows is using DHCP. It is currently ignored for Linux guests since they
do not have this problem.

--machine-readable
--machine-readable=format
This option is used to make the output more machine friendly when being parsed by
other programs. See "Machine readable output" below.

-n in:out
-n out
--network in:out
--network out
-b in:out
-b out
--bridge in:out
--bridge out
Map network (or bridge) called "in" to network (or bridge) called "out". If no "in:"
prefix is given, all other networks (or bridges) are mapped to "out".

See "Networks and bridges" below.

-o disk
This is the same as -o local.

-o glance
This is a legacy option. You should probably use -o openstack instead.

Set the output method to OpenStack Glance. In this mode the converted guest is
uploaded to Glance. See virt-v2v-output-openstack(1).

-o kubevirt
Set the output method to kubevirt. Note the way this mode works is experimental and
will change in future.

In this mode, the converted guest is written to a local directory specified by -os
/dir (the directory must exist). The converted guest’s disks are written to:

/dir/name-sda
/dir/name-sdb
[etc]

and guest metadata is created in the associated YAML file:

/dir/name.yaml

where "name" is the guest name.

-o libvirt
Set the output method to libvirt. This is the default.

In this mode, the converted guest is created as a libvirt guest. You may also specify
a libvirt connection URI (see -oc).

See "Starting the libvirt system instance" below, and virt-v2v-output-local(1).

-o local
Set the output method to local.

In this mode, the converted guest is written to a local directory specified by -os
/dir (the directory must exist). The converted guest’s disks are written as:

/dir/name-sda
/dir/name-sdb
[etc]

and a libvirt XML file is created containing guest metadata:

/dir/name.xml

where "name" is the guest name.

-o null
Set the output method to null.

The guest is converted and copied but the results are thrown away and no metadata is
written.

-o openstack
Set the output method to OpenStack. See virt-v2v-output-openstack(1).

-o ovirt
This is the same as -o rhv.

-o ovirt-upload
This is the same as -o rhv-upload.

-o qemu
Set the output method to qemu.

This is similar to -o local, except that a shell script is written which you can use
to boot the guest in qemu. The converted disks and shell script are written to the
directory specified by -os.

When using this output mode, you can also specify the -oo qemu-boot option which boots
the guest under qemu immediately.

-o rhev
This is the same as -o rhv.

-o rhv
Set the output method to rhv.

The converted guest is written to a RHV Export Storage Domain. The -os parameter must
also be used to specify the location of the Export Storage Domain. Note this does not
actually import the guest into RHV. You have to do that manually later using the UI.

See virt-v2v-output-rhv(1).

-o rhv-upload
Set the output method to rhv-upload.

The converted guest is written directly to a RHV Data Domain. This is a faster method
than -o rhv, but requires oVirt or RHV ≥ 4.2.

See virt-v2v-output-rhv(1).

-o vdsm
Set the output method to vdsm.

This mode is similar to -o rhv, but the full path to the data domain must be given:
/rhv/data-center/<data-center-uuid>/<data-domain-uuid>. This mode is only used when
virt-v2v runs under VDSM control.

-oa sparse
-oa preallocated
Set the output file allocation mode. The default is "sparse".

-oc URI
Specify a connection URI to use when writing the converted guest.

For -o libvirt this is the libvirt URI. Only local libvirt connections can be used.
Remote libvirt connections will not work. See virt-v2v-output-local(1) for further
information.

-of format
When converting the guest, convert the disks to the given format.

If not specified, then the input format is used.

-on name
Rename the guest when converting it. If this option is not used then the output name
is the same as the input name.

-oo OPTION=VALUE
Set output option(s) related to the current output mode. To display short help on
what options are available you can use:

virt-v2v -o rhv-upload -oo "?"

-oo compressed
For outputs which support qcow2 format (-of qcow2), this writes a compressed qcow2
file. It is the equivalent to the -c option of qemu-img(1).

-oo guest-id="ID"
For -o openstack (virt-v2v-output-openstack(1)) only, set a guest ID which is saved on
each Cinder volume in the "virt_v2v_guest_id" volume property.

-oo qemu-boot
When using -o qemu only, this boots the guest immediately after virt-v2v finishes.

-oo verify-server-certificate
-oo verify-server-certificate="true|false"
For -o openstack (virt-v2v-output-openstack(1)) only, this can be used to disable SSL
certification validation when connecting to OpenStack by specifying -oo
verify-server-certificate=false.

-oo os-*=*
For -o openstack (virt-v2v-output-openstack(1)) only, set optional OpenStack
authentication. For example -oo os-username=NAME is equivalent to "openstack
--os-username=NAME".

-oo rhv-cafile=ca.pem
For -o rhv-upload (virt-v2v-output-rhv(1)) only, the ca.pem file (Certificate
Authority), copied from /etc/pki/ovirt-engine/ca.pem on the oVirt engine.

-oo rhv-cluster="CLUSTERNAME"
For -o rhv-upload (virt-v2v-output-rhv(1)) only, set the RHV Cluster Name. If not
given it uses "Default".

-oo rhv-proxy
For -o rhv-upload (virt-v2v-output-rhv(1)) only, proxy the upload through oVirt
Engine. This is slower than uploading directly to the oVirt node but may be necessary
if you do not have direct network access to the nodes.

-oo rhv-verifypeer
For -o rhv-upload (virt-v2v-output-rhv(1)) only, verify the oVirt/RHV server’s
identity by checking the server‘s certificate against the Certificate Authority.

-oo server-id="NAME|UUID"
For -o openstack (virt-v2v-output-openstack(1)) only, set the name of the conversion
appliance where virt-v2v is running.

-oo vdsm-compat=0.10
-oo vdsm-compat=1.1
If -o vdsm and the output format is qcow2, then we add the qcow2 compat=0.10 option to
the output file for compatibility with RHEL 6 (see
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1145582).

If -oo vdsm-compat=1.1 is used then modern qcow2 (compat=1.1) files are generated
instead.

Currently -oo vdsm-compat=0.10 is the default, but this will change to -oo
vdsm-compat=1.1 in a future version of virt-v2v (when we can assume that everyone is
using a modern version of qemu).

Note this option only affects -o vdsm output. All other output modes (including -o
rhv) generate modern qcow2 compat=1.1 files, always.

If this option is available, then "vdsm-compat-option" will appear in the
--machine-readable output.

-oo vdsm-image-uuid=UUID
-oo vdsm-vol-uuid=UUID
-oo vdsm-vm-uuid=UUID
-oo vdsm-ovf-output=DIR
Normally the RHV output mode chooses random UUIDs for the target guest. However VDSM
needs to control the UUIDs and passes these parameters when virt-v2v runs under VDSM
control. The parameters control:

• the image directory of each guest disk (-oo vdsm-image-uuid) (this option is
passed once for each guest disk)

• UUIDs for each guest disk (-oo vdsm-vol-uuid) (this option is passed once for each
guest disk)

• the OVF file name (-oo vdsm-vm-uuid).

• the OVF output directory (default current directory) (-oo vdsm-ovf-output).

The format of UUIDs is: "12345678-1234-1234-1234-123456789abc" (each hex digit can be
"0-9" or "a-f"), conforming to OSF DCE 1.1.

These options can only be used with -o vdsm.

-oo vdsm-ovf-flavour=flavour
This option controls the format of the OVF generated at the end of conversion.
Currently there are two possible flavours:

rhvexp
The OVF format used in RHV export storage domain.

ovirt
The OVF format understood by oVirt REST API.

For backward compatibility the default is rhvexp, but this may change in the future.

-op file
Supply a file containing a password to be used when connecting to the target
hypervisor. Note the file should contain the whole password, without any trailing
newline, and for security the file should have mode 0600 so that others cannot read
it.

-os storage
The location of the storage for the converted guest.

For -o libvirt, this is a libvirt directory pool (see "virsh pool-list") or pool UUID.

For -o local and -o qemu, this is a directory name. The directory must exist.

For -o rhv-upload, this is the name of the destination Storage Domain.

For -o openstack, this is the optional Cinder volume type.

For -o rhv, this can be an NFS path of the Export Storage Domain of the form
"<host>:<path>", eg:

rhv-storage.example.com:/rhv/export

The NFS export must be mountable and writable by the user and host running virt-v2v,
since the virt-v2v program has to actually mount it when it runs. So you probably
have to run virt-v2v as "root".

Or: You can mount the Export Storage Domain yourself, and point -os to the mountpoint.
Note that virt-v2v will still need to write to this remote directory, so virt-v2v will
still need to run as "root".

You will get an error if virt-v2v is unable to mount/write to the Export Storage
Domain.

--print-source
Print information about the source guest and stop. This option is useful when you are
setting up network and bridge maps. See "Networks and bridges".

--qemu-boot
This is the same as -oo qemu-boot.

-q
--quiet
This disables progress bars and other unnecessary output.

--root ask
--root single
--root first
--root /dev/sdX
--root /dev/VG/LV
Choose the root filesystem to be converted.

In the case where the virtual machine is dual-boot or multi-boot, or where the VM has
other filesystems that look like operating systems, this option can be used to select
the root filesystem (a.k.a. "C:" drive or /) of the operating system that is to be
converted. The Windows Recovery Console, certain attached DVD drives, and bugs in
libguestfs inspection heuristics, can make a guest look like a multi-boot operating
system.

The default in virt-v2v ≤ 0.7.1 was --root single, which causes virt-v2v to die if a
multi-boot operating system is found.

Since virt-v2v ≥ 0.7.2 the default is now --root ask: If the VM is found to be multi-
boot, then virt-v2v will stop and list the possible root filesystems and ask the user
which to use. This requires that virt-v2v is run interactively.

--root first means to choose the first root device in the case of a multi-boot
operating system. Since this is a heuristic, it may sometimes choose the wrong one.

You can also name a specific root device, eg. --root /dev/sda2 would mean to use the
second partition on the first hard drive. If the named root device does not exist or
was not detected as a root device, then virt-v2v will fail.

Note that there is a bug in grub which prevents it from successfully booting a
multiboot system if virtio is enabled. Grub is only able to boot an operating system
from the first virtio disk. Specifically, /boot must be on the first virtio disk, and
it cannot chainload an OS which is not in the first virtio disk.

-v
--verbose
Enable verbose messages for debugging.

-V
--version
Display version number and exit.

--wrap
Wrap error, warning, and informative messages. This is the default when the output is
a tty. If the output of the program is redirected to a file, wrapping is disabled
unless you use this option.

-x Enable tracing of libguestfs API calls.

NOTES

Xen paravirtualized guests
Older versions of virt-v2v could turn a Xen paravirtualized (PV) guest into a KVM guest by
installing a new kernel. This version of virt-v2v does not attempt to install any new
kernels. Instead it will give you an error if there are only Xen PV kernels available.

Therefore before conversion you should check that a regular kernel is installed. For some
older Linux distributions, this means installing a kernel from the table below:

RHEL 3 (Does not apply, as there was no Xen PV kernel)

RHEL 4 i686 with > 10GB of RAM: install 'kernel-hugemem'
i686 SMP: install 'kernel-smp'
other i686: install 'kernel'
x86-64 SMP with > 8 CPUs: install 'kernel-largesmp'
x86-64 SMP: install 'kernel-smp'
other x86-64: install 'kernel'

RHEL 5 i686: install 'kernel-PAE'
x86-64: install 'kernel'

SLES 10 i586 with > 10GB of RAM: install 'kernel-bigsmp'
i586 SMP: install 'kernel-smp'
other i586: install 'kernel-default'
x86-64 SMP: install 'kernel-smp'
other x86-64: install 'kernel-default'

SLES 11+ i586: install 'kernel-pae'
x86-64: install 'kernel-default'

Windows (Does not apply, as there is no Xen PV Windows kernel)

Enabling virtio
"Virtio" is the name for a set of drivers which make disk (block device), network and
other guest operations work much faster on KVM.

Older versions of virt-v2v could install these drivers for certain Linux guests. This
version of virt-v2v does not attempt to install new Linux kernels or drivers, but will
warn you if they are not installed already.

In order to enable virtio, and hence improve performance of the guest after conversion,
you should ensure that the minimum versions of packages are installed before conversion,
by consulting the table below.

RHEL 3 No virtio drivers are available

RHEL 4 kernel >= 2.5.9-89.EL
lvm2 >= 2.02.42-5.el4
device-mapper >= 1.02.28-2.el4
selinux-policy-targeted >= 1.17.30-2.152.el4
policycoreutils >= 1.18.1-4.13

RHEL 5 kernel >= 2.6.18-128.el5
lvm2 >= 2.02.40-6.el5
selinux-policy-targeted >= 2.4.6-203.el5

RHEL 6+ All versions support virtio

Fedora All versions support virtio

SLES 11+ All versions support virtio

SLES 10 kernel >= 2.6.16.60-0.85.1

OpenSUSE 11+ All versions support virtio

OpenSUSE 10 kernel >= 2.6.25.5-1.1

Debian 6+ All versions support virtio

Ubuntu 10.04+ All versions support virtio

Windows Drivers are installed from the ISO or directory pointed
to by the "VIRTIO_WIN" environment variable if present.
If the "VIRTIO_WIN" environment variable is absent
(which is the recommended setting), then libosinfo is
consulted first, for driver files that are locally
available on the conversion host.

RHEL 4: SELinux relabel appears to hang forever
In RHEL ≤ 4.7 there was a bug which causes SELinux relabelling to appear to hang forever
at:

*** Warning -- SELinux relabel is required. ***
*** Disabling security enforcement. ***
*** Relabeling could take a very long time, ***
*** depending on file system size. ***

In reality it is waiting for you to press a key (but there is no visual indication of
this). You can either hit the "[Return]" key, at which point the guest will finish
relabelling and reboot, or you can install policycoreutils ≥ 1.18.1-4.13 before starting
the v2v conversion. See also https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=244636

Debian and Ubuntu
"warning: could not determine a way to update the configuration of Grub2"

Currently, virt-v2v has no way to set the default kernel in Debian and Ubuntu guests using
GRUB 2 as bootloader. This means that virt-v2v will not change the default kernel used
for booting, even in case it is not the best kernel available on the guest. A recommended
procedure is, before using virt-v2v, to check that the boot kernel is the best kernel
available in the guest (for example by making sure the guest is up-to-date).

"vsyscall attempted with vsyscall=none"

When run on a recent Debian host virt-v2v may fail to convert guests which were created
before 2013. In the debugging output you will see a crash message similar to:

vsyscall attempted with vsyscall=none ip:...
segfault at ...

This is caused because Debian removed support for running old binaries which used the
legacy vsyscall page to call into the kernel.

You can work around this problem by running this command before running virt-v2v:

export LIBGUESTFS_APPEND="vsyscall=emulate"

For more information, see https://bugzilla.redhat.com/1592061

Windows
System disk on a Dynamic Disk is not supported

If the Windows system disk (the drive containing "\windows") is located on a Dynamic Disk
then it cannot be converted. Data disks — that is, disks which are part of the guest but
do not contain parts of the Windows operating system — may be Dynamic Disks.

See https://bugzilla.redhat.com/2140548.

Windows ≥ 8 Fast Startup is incompatible with virt-v2v

Guests which use the Windows ≥ 8 "Fast Startup" feature (or guests which are hibernated)
cannot be converted with virt-v2v. You will see an error:

virt-v2v: error: unable to mount the disk image for writing. This has
probably happened because Windows Hibernation or Fast Restart is being
used in this guest. You have to disable this (in the guest) in order
to use virt-v2v.

As the message says, you need to boot the guest and disable the "Fast Startup" feature
(Control Panel → Power Options → Choose what the power buttons do → Change settings that
are currently unavailable → Turn on fast startup), and shut down the guest, and then you
will be able to convert it.

For more information, see: "WINDOWS HIBERNATION AND WINDOWS 8 FAST STARTUP" in guestfs(3).

Boot failure: 0x0000007B

This boot failure is caused by Windows being unable to find or load the right disk driver
(eg. viostor.sys). If you experience this error, here are some things to check:

• First ensure that the guest boots on the source hypervisor before conversion.

• Check you have the Windows virtio drivers available in /usr/share/virtio-win, and that
virt-v2v did not print any warning about not being able to install virtio drivers.

On Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7, you will need to install the signed drivers available
in the "virtio-win" package. If you do not have access to the signed drivers, then
you will probably need to disable driver signing in the boot menus.

• Check that you are presenting a virtio-blk interface (not virtio-scsi and not ide) to
the guest. On the qemu/KVM command line you should see something similar to this:

... -drive file=windows-sda,if=virtio ...

In libvirt XML, you should see:

• Check that Windows Group Policy does not prevent the driver from being installed or
used. Try deleting Windows Group Policy before conversion.

• Check there is no anti-virus or other software which implements Group Policy-like
prohibitions on installing or using new drivers.

• Enable boot debugging and check the viostor.sys driver is being loaded.

OpenStack and Windows reactivation

OpenStack does not offer stable device / PCI addresses to guests. Every time it creates
or starts a guest, it regenerates the libvirt XML for that guest from scratch. The
libvirt XML will have no <address> fields. Libvirt will then assign addresses to devices,
in a predictable manner. Addresses may change if any of the following are true:

• A new disk or network device has been added or removed from the guest.

• The version of OpenStack or (possibly) libvirt has changed.

Because Windows does not like "hardware" changes of this kind, it may trigger Windows
reactivation.

This can also prevent booting with a 7B error [see previous section] if the guest has
group policy containing "Device Installation Restrictions".

Support for SHA-2 certificates in Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2

Later versions of the Windows virtio drivers are signed using SHA-2 certificates (instead
of SHA-1). The original shipping Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 did not understand
SHA-2 certificates and so the Windows virtio drivers will not install properly.

To fix this you must apply SHA-2 Code Signing Support from:
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/security-updates/SecurityAdvisories/2015/3033929 before
converting the guest.

For further information see: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1624878

Networks and bridges
Guests are usually connected to one or more networks, and when converted to the target
hypervisor you usually want to reconnect those networks at the destination. The options
--network, --bridge and --mac allow you to do that.

If you are unsure of what networks and bridges are in use on the source hypervisor, then
you can examine the source metadata (libvirt XML, vCenter information, etc.). Or you can
run virt-v2v with the --print-source option which causes virt-v2v to print out the
information it has about the guest on the source and then exit.

In the --print-source output you will see a section showing the guest’s Network Interface
Cards (NICs):

$ virt-v2v [-i ...] --print-source name
[...]
NICs:
Network "default" mac: 52:54:00:d0:cf:0e

Bridges are special classes of network devices which are attached to a named external
network on the source hypervisor, for example:

$ virt-v2v [-i ...] --print-source name
[...]
NICs:
Bridge "br0"

To map a specific source bridge to a target network, for example "br0" on the source to
"ovirtmgmt" on the target, use:

virt-v2v [...] --bridge br0:ovirtmgmt

To map every bridge to a target network, use:

virt-v2v [...] --bridge ovirtmgmt

Fine-grained mapping of guest NICs

The --mac option gives you more control over the mapping, letting you map single NICs to
either networks or bridges on the target. For example a source guest with two NICs could
map them individually to two networks called "mgmt" and "clientdata" like this:

$ virt-v2v [...] \
--mac 52:54:00:d0:cf:0e:network:mgmt \
--mac 52:54:00:d0:cf:0f:network:clientdata

Note that virt-v2v does not have the ability to change a guest’s MAC address. The MAC
address is part of the guest metadata and must remain the same on source and target
hypervisors. Most guests will use the MAC address to set up persistent associations
between NICs and internal names (like "eth0"), with firewall settings, or even for other
purposes like software licensing.

Resource requirements
Network

The most important resource for virt-v2v appears to be network bandwidth. Virt-v2v should
be able to copy guest data at gigabit ethernet speeds or greater.

Ensure that the network connections between servers (conversion server, NFS server,
vCenter, Xen) are as fast and as low latency as possible.

Disk space

Virt-v2v places potentially large temporary files in $VIRT_V2V_TMPDIR (usually /var/tmp,
see also "ENVIRONMENT VARIBLES" below). Using tmpfs is a bad idea.

For each guest disk, an overlay is stored temporarily. This stores the changes made
during conversion, and is used as a cache. The overlays are not particularly large - tens
or low hundreds of megabytes per disk is typical. In addition to the overlay(s), input
and output methods may use disk space, as outlined in the table below.

-i ova
This temporarily places a full copy of the uncompressed source disks in
$VIRT_V2V_TMPDIR (or /var/tmp).

-o glance
This temporarily places a full copy of the output disks in $VIRT_V2V_TMPDIR (or
/var/tmp).

-o local
-o qemu
You must ensure there is sufficient space in the output directory for the converted
guest.

See also "Minimum free space check in the host" below.

VMware vCenter resources

Copying from VMware vCenter is currently quite slow, but we believe this to be an issue
with VMware. Ensuring the VMware ESXi hypervisor and vCenter are running on fast hardware
with plenty of memory should alleviate this.

Compute power and RAM

Virt-v2v is not especially compute or RAM intensive. If you are running many parallel
conversions, then you may consider allocating one CPU core and 2 GB of RAM per running
instance.

Virt-v2v can be run in a virtual machine.

Trimming

Virt-v2v attempts to optimize the speed of conversion by ignoring guest filesystem data
which is not used. This would include unused filesystem blocks, blocks containing zeroes,
and deleted files.

To do this, virt-v2v issues a non-destructive fstrim(8) operation. As this happens to an
overlay placed over the guest data, it does not affect the source in any way.

If this fstrim operation fails, you will see a warning, but virt-v2v will continue anyway.
It may run more slowly (in some cases much more slowly), because it is copying the unused
parts of the disk.

Unfortunately support for fstrim is not universal, and it also depends on specific details
of the filesystem, partition alignment, and backing storage. As an example, NTFS
filesystems cannot be fstrimmed if they occupy a partition which is not aligned to the
underlying storage. That was the default on Windows before Vista. As another example,
VFAT filesystems (used by UEFI guests) cannot be trimmed at all.

fstrim support in the Linux kernel is improving gradually, so over time some of these
restrictions will be lifted and virt-v2v will work faster.

Post-conversion tasks
Guest network configuration

Virt-v2v cannot currently reconfigure a guest’s network configuration. If the converted
guest is not connected to the same subnet as the source, its network configuration may
have to be updated. See also virt-customize(1).

Converting a Windows guest

When converting a Windows guests, the conversion process is split into two stages:

1. Offline conversion.

2. First boot.

The guest will be bootable after the offline conversion stage, but will not yet have all
necessary drivers installed to work correctly. These will be installed automatically the
first time the guest boots.

N.B. Take care not to interrupt the automatic driver installation process when logging in
to the guest for the first time, as this may prevent the guest from subsequently booting
correctly.

Free space for conversion
Free space in the guest

Virt-v2v checks there is sufficient free space in the guest filesystem to perform the
conversion. Currently it checks:

Linux root filesystem
Minimum free space: 100 MB

Linux /boot
Minimum free space: 50 MB

This is because we need to build a new initramfs for some Enterprise Linux
conversions.

Windows "C:" drive
Minimum free space: 100 MB

We may have to copy in many virtio drivers and guest agents.

Any other mountable filesystem
Minimum free space: 10 MB

In addition to the actual free space, each filesystem is required to have at least 100
available inodes.

Minimum free space check in the host

You must have sufficient free space in the host directory used to store large temporary
overlays. To find out which directory this is, use:

$ df -h "`guestfish get-cachedir`"
Filesystem Size Used Avail Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/root 50G 40G 6.8G 86% /

and look under the "Avail" column. Virt-v2v will refuse to do the conversion at all
unless at least 1GB is available there. You can change the directory that virt-v2v uses
by setting $VIRT_V2V_TMPDIR.

See also "Resource requirements" above and "ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES" below.

Running virt-v2v as root or non-root
Nothing in virt-v2v inherently needs root access, and it will run just fine as a non-root
user. However, certain external features may require either root or a special user:

Mounting the Export Storage Domain
When using -o rhv -os server:/esd virt-v2v has to have sufficient privileges to NFS
mount the Export Storage Domain from "server".

You can avoid needing root here by mounting it yourself before running virt-v2v, and
passing -os /mountpoint instead, but first of all read the next section ...

Writing to the Export Storage Domain as 36:36
RHV-M cannot read files and directories from the Export Storage Domain unless they
have UID:GID 36:36. You will see VM import problems if the UID:GID is not correct.

When you run virt-v2v -o rhv as root, virt-v2v attempts to create files and
directories with the correct ownership. If you run virt-v2v as non-root, it will
probably still work, but you will need to manually change ownership after virt-v2v has
finished.

Writing to libvirt
When using -o libvirt, you may need to run virt-v2v as root so that it can write to
the libvirt system instance (ie. "qemu:///system") and to the default location for
disk images (usually /var/lib/libvirt/images).

You can avoid this by setting up libvirt connection authentication, see
http://libvirt.org/auth.html. Alternatively, use -oc qemu:///session, which will
write to your per-user libvirt instance.

See also "Starting the libvirt system instance".

Writing to Openstack
Because of how Cinder volumes are presented as /dev block devices, using -o openstack
normally requires that virt-v2v is run as root.

Writing to Glance
This does not need root (in fact it probably won’t work), but may require either a
special user and/or for you to source a script that sets authentication environment
variables. Consult the Glance documentation.

Writing to block devices
This normally requires root. See the next section.

Writing to block devices
Some output modes write to local files. In general these modes also let you write to
block devices, but before you run virt-v2v you may have to arrange for symbolic links to
the desired block devices in the output directory.

For example if using -o local -os /dir then virt-v2v would normally create files called:

/dir/name-sda # first disk
/dir/name-sdb # second disk
...
/dir/name.xml # metadata

If you wish the disks to be written to block devices then you would need to create
/dir/name-sda (etc) as symlinks to the block devices:

# lvcreate -L 10G -n VolumeForDiskA VG
# lvcreate -L 6G -n VolumeForDiskB VG
# ln -sf /dev/VG/VolumeForDiskA /dir/name-sda
# ln -sf /dev/VG/VolumeForDiskB /dir/name-sdb

Note that you must precreate the correct number of block devices of the correct size.
Typically -of raw has to be used too, but other formats such as qcow2 can be useful
occasionally so virt-v2v does not force you to use raw on block devices.

Minimal XML for -i libvirtxml option
When using the -i libvirtxml option, you have to supply some libvirt XML. Writing this
from scratch is hard, so the template below is helpful.

Note this should only be used for testing and/or where you know what you're doing! If you
have libvirt metadata for the guest, always use that instead.

Machine readable output
The --machine-readable option can be used to make the output more machine friendly, which
is useful when calling virt-v2v from other programs, GUIs etc.

There are two ways to use this option.

Firstly use the option on its own to query the capabilities of the virt-v2v binary.
Typical output looks like this:

$ virt-v2v --machine-readable
virt-v2v
libguestfs-rewrite
colours-option
vdsm-compat-option
input:disk
[...]
output:local
[...]
convert:linux
convert:windows

A list of features is printed, one per line, and the program exits with status 0.

The "input:" and "output:" features refer to -i and -o (input and output mode) options
supported by this binary. The "convert:" features refer to guest types that this binary
knows how to convert.

Secondly use the option in conjunction with other options to make the regular program
output more machine friendly.

At the moment this means:

1. Progress bar messages can be parsed from stdout by looking for this regular
expression:

^[0-9]+/[0-9]+$

2. The calling program should treat messages sent to stdout (except for progress bar
messages) as status messages. They can be logged and/or displayed to the user.

3. The calling program should treat messages sent to stderr as error messages. In
addition, virt-v2v exits with a non-zero status code if there was a fatal error.

Virt-v2v ≤ 0.9.1 did not support the --machine-readable option at all. The option was
added when virt-v2v was rewritten in 2014.

It is possible to specify a format string for controlling the output; see "ADVANCED
MACHINE READABLE OUTPUT" in guestfs(3).

Starting the libvirt system instance
Failed to connect socket to '/var/run/libvirt/virtqemud-sock': No such file or directory
Failed to connect socket to '/var/run/libvirt/virtqemud-sock-ro': Connection refused

If you have just installed libvirt and virt-v2v, then you may see the errors above. This
is caused by libvirt daemons that provide various services not running straight after
installation. (This may depend on your distribution and vendor presets).

To fix this on systemd-based distributions, do:

systemctl isolate multi-user.target

See also https://bugzilla.redhat.com/2182024.

FILES

       /usr/share/virtio-win
           (Optional)

           If this directory is present, then virtio drivers for Windows guests will be found
           from this directory and installed in the guest during conversion.

ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES

"VIRT_V2V_TMPDIR"
"LIBGUESTFS_CACHEDIR"
Location of the temporary directory used for the potentially large temporary overlay
file. If neither environment variable is set then /var/tmp is used.

To reliably ensure large temporary files are cleaned up (for example in case virt-v2v
crashes) you should create a randomly named directory under /var/tmp, set
"VIRT_V2V_TMPDIR" to point to this directory, then when virt-v2v exits remove the
directory.

See the "Disk space" section above.

"VIRT_TOOLS_DATA_DIR"
This can point to the directory containing data files used for Windows conversion.

Normally you do not need to set this. If not set, a compiled-in default will be used
(something like /usr/share/virt-tools).

This directory may contain the following files:

rhsrvany.exe
(Required when doing conversions of Windows guests)

This is the RHSrvAny Windows binary, used to install a "firstboot" script in the
guest during conversion of Windows guests.

See also: "https://github.com/rwmjones/rhsrvany"

pnp_wait.exe
(Recommended when doing conversions of Windows guests)

This tool waits for newly installed Windows devices to become available before
trying to configure them, for example to set network configuration. It is part of
the RHSrvAny project.

pvvxsvc.exe
This is a Windows binary shipped with SUSE VMDP, used to install a "firstboot"
script in Windows guests. It is an alternative to RHSrvAny.

"VIRTIO_WIN"
This is an override for where virtio drivers for Windows are searched for. It can be
a directory or point to virtio-win.iso (CD ROM image containing drivers).

If unset, then we look for drivers via whichever of these methods succeeds first:

"osinfo-db"
Load osinfo data from the default paths, and attempt to find drivers via libosinfo
lookup. This is the preferred method.

/usr/share/virtio-win/virtio-win.iso
The ISO containing virtio drivers for Windows.

/usr/share/virtio-win
The exploded tree of virtio drivers for Windows. This is usually incomplete,
hence the least preferred method.

See "Enabling virtio".

For other environment variables, see "ENVIRONMENT VARIABLES" in guestfs(3).

OTHER TOOLS

       engine-image-uploader(8)
           Variously called "engine-image-uploader", "ovirt-image-uploader" or
           "rhevm-image-uploader", this tool allows you to copy a guest from one oVirt or RHV
           Export Storage Domain to another.  It only permits importing a guest that was
           previously exported from another oVirt/RHV instance.

       import-to-ovirt.pl
           This script can be used to import guests that already run on KVM to oVirt or RHV.  For
           more information, see this blog posting by the author of virt-v2v:

           https://rwmj.wordpress.com/2015/09/18/importing-kvm-guests-to-ovirt-or-rhev/#content

AUTHORS

       Matthew Booth

       Cédric Bosdonnat

       Laszlo Ersek

       Tomáš Golembiovský

       Shahar Havivi

       Richard W.M. Jones

       Roman Kagan

       Mike Latimer

       Nir Soffer

       Pino Toscano

       Xiaodai Wang

       Ming Xie

       Tingting Zheng

COPYRIGHT

       Copyright (C) 2009-2022 Red Hat Inc.

LICENSE

       This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of
       the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either
       version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.

       This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY;
       without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE.
       See the GNU General Public License for more details.

       You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program;
       if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
       Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.

BUGS

       To get a list of bugs against libguestfs, use this link:
       https://bugzilla.redhat.com/buglist.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools

       To report a new bug against libguestfs, use this link:
       https://bugzilla.redhat.com/enter_bug.cgi?component=libguestfs&product=Virtualization+Tools

       When reporting a bug, please supply:

       •   The version of libguestfs.

       •   Where you got libguestfs (eg. which Linux distro, compiled from source, etc)

       •   Describe the bug accurately and give a way to reproduce it.

       •   Run libguestfs-test-tool(1) and paste the complete, unedited output into the bug
           report.