converting virtualbox vm to a xen hypervisor virtual machine _ serverstack

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VirtualBox is one of the easiest virtualization platforms in use today. Withgraphical user interface, cross-platform support, and comprehensivedocumentation online, it is also one of the most obvious choices for adeveloper. So how do you scale this virtual machine from your workstation to adevelopment server?

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Converting VirtualBox VM to a Xen Hypervisor Virtual Machine | ServerStack https://www.serverstack.com/blog/2012/11/20/converting-virtualbox-vm-...

1 of 5 3/19/2015 4:21 PM

The process is relative straightforward and involves simple steps:

Step 1: Locate the VDI files location from Virtual Machines setting inVirtualBox. In our example, the VM is CentOS 6.3, disk image name iscentos6.vdi and it uses 654 MB of space. The Virtual Size is the amountof space this disk image will use when converted to RAW format:

Step 2: Compress the .vdi file of your VM with WinRAR using BestCompression method. This reduced our VDI file from 654 MB to 158 MBRAR archive:

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Step 3: Upload the archived disk image (centos6.rar) to your Xen servervia SFTP / SCP, and extract centos6.vdi to your Xen image folder (e.g./var/lib/xen/images/ ). You might have to install unrar for your distributionof Linux or download directly from RarLab:

# wget http://rarlab.com/rar/rarlinux-x64-4.2.0.tar.gz && tar xvfz rarlinux-x64-4.2.0.tar.gz# cp rar/unrar /usr/bin/# cd /var/lib/xen/images && unrar e centos6.rarExtracting centos6.vdi OKAll OK

Step 4: Download and install VirtualBox on the Xen server. This may seema bit redundant, but we are really just interested in VBoxManage toolsupplied with it. On CentOS hypervisor, install the necessary libraries anddownload VirtualBox 4.2 or whichever is latest:

# yum -y install qt libXmu && rpm -ivh http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/4.2.4/VirtualBox-4.2-4.2.4_81684_el6-1.

This should give you VBoxManage utility:

# ls -l /usr/lib/virtualbox/VBoxManage-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 758384 Oct 26 12:17 /usr/lib/virtualbox/VBoxManage

Now you can convert your VDI disk image to a RAW disk image that you will usefor Xen VM:

# cd /var/lib/xen/images# /usr/lib/virtualbox/VBoxManage clonehd centos6.vdi centos6.img -format RAW

0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%

Clone hard disk created in format 'RAW'. UUID: f220932f-8750-4f5b-b220-8050210e9835

Step 5: Refer to the centos6.vbox file, and create the configuration file forXen VM. You can do this manually or create a shell script that would

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uuid = "f220932f-8750-4f5b-b220-8050210e9835"memory = 1024vcpus = 1bootloader = "/usr/bin/pygrub"on_poweroff = "destroy"on_reboot = "restart"on_crash = "restart"disk = [ "file:/var/lib/xen/images/centos6.img,xvda,w" ]vif = [ "mac=00:16:3e:46:e6:fb,bridge=xenbr0" ]extra="console=hvc0"

Step 6: Create your Xen VM using the configuration file and the RAWimage:

# cd /etc/xen/# xm create centos6Using config file "./centos6".

Started domain centos6 (id=16)

Step 7: Verify that everything is working as expected:

The virtual machine is up and running on a Xen hypervisor. This simplifies theentire process, as you can develop your entire virtual machine on yourworkstation, and have it up and running on a production hypervisor withouthaving to migrate individual services manually.

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converting virtualbox vm to a xen hypervisor virtual machine _ serverstack

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