[Users] Making v2v easier?

[Richard W.M. Jones]

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 at redhat.com> 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.

> 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

I suspect in this case what you really should be doing is just copying
the source disk image, without using virt-v2v at all.

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
libguestfs lets you edit virtual machines.  Supports shell scripting,
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