When to use this tool¶

This tool is not usually necessary, but there are a few special cases (see list below) where you might need it.

If your case does not fit one of these special cases, then ignore this tool and read virt-v2v(1) instead. The virt-v2v-copy-to-local process is slower than using virt-v2v directly, because it has to copy unused parts of the guest disk.

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You have a Xen guest using host block devices. Virt-v2v cannot convert such guests directly.

See virt-v2v-input-xen(1).

How this tool works¶

This tool uses libvirt to get the libvirt XML (metadata) of the remote guest, essentially equivalent to running "virsh dumpxml guest".

It then uses the XML to locate the remote guest disks, which are copied over using a hypervisor-specific method. It uses ssh for remote Xen hypervisors.

It then modifies the libvirt XML so that it points at the local copies of the guest disks.

The libvirt XML is output to a file called guest.xml (where guest is the name of the guest). The disk(s) are output to file(s) called guest-disk1, guest-disk2 and so on.

After copying the guest locally, you can convert it using:

 virt-v2v -i libvirtxml guest.xml [-o options ...]

Virt-v2v finds the local copies of the disks by looking in the XML.

Copy and convert from Xen hypervisor that uses host block devices¶

For full instructions, see virt-v2v-input-xen(1).

 virt-v2v-copy-to-local -ic xen+ssh://root@xen.example.com xen_guest
 virt-v2v -i libvirtxml xen_guest.xml -o local -os /var/tmp
 rm xen_guest.xml xen_guest-disk*