Convert a VMWare VMDK disk image to Xen HVM

http://linux.cloudibee.com/2008/11/vmware-to-xen-conversion

Here are the steps for converting Vmware windows/linux guest to Xen format. You need qemu-img tool (from the qemu-utils package) for the conversion.

You first have to ensure that your image has IDE drivers installed (see Microsoft kb314082)

Conversion steps:

1) Halt the vmware VM . Check the format of the vmware vmdk file

[root@vm_s7 guest22]# qemu-img info guest22-flat.vmdk image: fooguest22-flat.vmdk file format: raw virtual size: 15G disk size: 15G [root@vm_s7 guest22]#

2) If the file format is “raw”, we need not convert the image file using qemu-img convert, just rename to .img file. If it is not “raw”, use “qemu-img” to convert the image to raw format.

3) How to convert using qemu-img.

[root@vm_s7 guest22]# qemu-img convert guest22-flat.vmdk -O raw /volumes/guest22/guest22.img

4) Create xen config file in /etc/xen/guest22 , with the renamed/converted image file as disk.

disk = [ 'file:/volumes/guest22/guest22.img,hda,w' ]

5) Boot up the xen domU guest. It should boot up fine.