Hi All, I've working on the integration between IBM SmartCloud Provisioning and VCL and I found some useful tips and issues on converting VMware Windows images into KVM images.
For the VMware Linux image case, you could directly convert VMware Linux images into KVM (libvirt) images using 'qemu-img' command. $ qemu-img convert Your-VMware-Linux-flat.vmdk -O raw (/qcow2) KVM-Linux.img However, if you try to directly convert a VMware Windows images into KVM images using 'qemu-img' command, you might have the BOD (blue screen of Death) issue on boot of the converted images in KVM. The main reason for BOD problem is that most VMware Windows images are installed on SCSI virtual disk but KVM requires IDE device driver for converted images. To solve this problem, you might have different methods but I'd like to introduce how I solved that problem. I updated the Windows Registry of the images offline to using libguestfs library in RHEL 6 (host). The detailed steps are follows: =============================== 1. Prepare OS - RHEL 6 X86_64 Notes: libguestfs-winsupport package is only needed on RHE 6 hosts 2. Install packages (qemu-img, all libguestfs related packages: http://libguestfs.org/ ) $ yum install qemu-img '*libguestfs*' 3. Download and install 'libguestfs-winsupport' (windows support package) ( http://rpm.pbone.net/index.php3/stat/4/idpl/16605602/dir/scientific_linux_6/com/libguestfs-winsupport-1.0-7.el6.x86_64.rpm.html ) $ rpm -i libguestfs-winsupport-1.0-7.el6.x86_64.rpm => You will see virt-win-reg command now (virt-win-reg manual : http://libguestfs.org/virt-win-reg.1.html#currentcontrolset_etc_ ) 4. Download and modify mergeide.reg (http://www.proxmox.com/downloads/proxmox-ve/misc/59-mergeide ) => Replace all CurrentControlSet => ControlSet001 e.g) vi mergeide.reg :1,$s/CurrentControlSet/ControlSet001/g 5. Define KVM xml file 6. Converting Images $ qemu-img convert Your-VMware-Windows-flat.vmdk Your-KVM-Windows.img $ virt-win-reg --merge Your-KVM-Windows.img mergeide.reg $ virsh --connect qemu:///system define Your_Image.xml $ virsh start Your_Image_Domain Note: I do NOT have any issues on this method but you might do this at your own risks. =============================== Thanks, -------------------------------------------------------------------- Young Hyun Oh IBM, Tivoli CTO Technology and Architecture