Re: [Users] Making v2v easier?

On 20/01/14 09:53, Richard W.M. Jones wrote: > On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 05:06:13PM +0100, Sander Grendelman wrote: >> On Fri, Jan 17, 2014 at 4:19 PM, Itamar Heim <iheim(a)redhat.com&gt; wrote: >>> I see a lot of threads about v2v pains (mostly from ESX?) >>> >>> I'm interested to see if we can make this simpler/easier. >> hear hear! >> >>> >>> if you have experience with this, please describe the steps you are using >>> (also the source platform), >> >> Sources: >> - Existing KVM (virt-manager/libvirt) platform >> - ESX >> - ova/ovf templates from several sources >> >> Methods: >> - KVM: >> virt-v2v with libvirtxml option, works reasonably well, most issues >> are with windows guests where virt-v2v needs libguestfs-winsupport and >> virtio-win (RHEL only) >> - ESX: >> virt-v2v which works reasonably well _if_ the right packages >> (libguestfs-winsupport virtio-win) are installed. >> virt-v2v can be used directly from ESX/ESX host (configure .netrc >> first) but this is quite slow >> another option is to export the VM as an OVA and then import it with virt-v2v >> - ova/ovf templates: >> hit and miss with virt-v2v, especially if they contain something >> that is not a regular windows/linux guest. >> Another option is to do a direct copy of the disks on a pre-created >> VM, clumsy. >> >>> and how you would like to see this make simpler >>> (I'm assuming that would start from somewhere in the webadmin probably). >> >> Webadmin would be nice, but better behaviour from existing tools would be >> a nice start too. >> >> For example: the flow with virt-v2v is >> 1) Analyze source, look for disks >> 2) Convert/copy disks to ovirt export domain >> 3) Try to add virtio stuff to the copied disks on the export domain >> >> If step 3 fails ( which happens a LOT), the copied disks are removed. >> This is very frustrating if you just waited a couple of hours for a large >> VM (e.g. 200GB) to be copied :( >> >> Some kind of graceful abort/resume would be VERY welcome. > > The above basically come down to the fact that currently virt-v2v does > the copy first and the v2v step second. It was my understanding > [Matt?] that guestconv is supposed to do the v2v step first followed > by the copy, which should solve all of that. guestconv doesn't address this problem directly. We need smarter copying for that :/ > >> Another issue with virt-v2v is that it _always_ tries to add virtio >> drivers. I have a virtual appliance that contains some kind of >> proprietary embedded OS: adding drivers will always fail, give me >> some option to override that and configure simple ide / e1000 >> hardware for the VM guestconv *does* address that. > I suspect in this case what you really should be doing is just copying > the source disk image, without using virt-v2v at all. Matt