[CentOS] VMWare server 2 disk image and QEMU

Wed Feb 11 16:38:56 UTC 2015
Les Mikesell <lesmikesell at gmail.com>

On Wed, Feb 11, 2015 at 9:46 AM, Karanbir Singh <mail-lists at karan.org> wrote:
> On 02/11/2015 09:39 AM, Allart Pieters wrote:
>> I need to convert a VMWare Server 2 disk image to QEMU. I've read that
>> QEMU supports VMWare disk formats. I just want to be sure it also
>> supports the old VMWare Server 2 format. Anyone has any experience
>> with/knowledge about this?
>
> take a look at the "qemu-img convert" bits - you might be best off
> converting the backing disk image to something better supported by
> qemu-kvm ( which is what I guess you mean when you say qemu ).

I don't think you need to do that.  Before Vmware ESXi 5.5 was
released, the earlier free versions imposed a 32Gb RAM limit so I used
KVM on a few larger machines.   And I was able to use existing images,
using the vmware converter tool to copy from ESXi hosts into a vmdk
file (essentially what vmware server would use).  I've since converted
back to ESXi because it seems easier to manage with less reboots for
updates so I can't check the details now, but I think I just followed
some guide I found.   Basically you have to create a new virtual
machine in KVM but tell it to use an existing disk.   I think the only
part that seemed complicated was telling the KVM tools to use
different storage locations for the image files since I wanted them
spread over several volumes.

-- 
   Les Mikesell
     lesmikesell at gmail.com