[Users] Making v2v easier?

[Itamar Heim]

On 01/20/2014 11:53 AM, 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 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.

would we focus on integrating with guestconv? how different from 
virt-v2v from integration perspective?

>
>> 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.
>