Export oVirt Image/Template for VMware

oVirt supports exporting your VM or template to multiple formats.  You can find a decent overview of the utility here, [[https://docs.openstack.org/image-guide/convert-images.html] https://docs.openstack.org/image-guide/convert-images.html]

 QCOW2 (KVM, Xen) - *.qcow2 QED (KVM) - *.qed raw - *.raw (Sometimes no file extension provided) VDI (VirtualBox) - *.vdi VHD (Hyper-V) - *.vpc VMDK (VMware) - *.vmdk

The utility to perform Exports is 'qemu-img' with the sub-command 'convert'

For example, I currently have a VM Template Image in my GlusterFS storage domain.  This storage domain is mounted through the hypervisor "rosie-carreiro", so I first SSH in to the hypervisor, and 'cd' to the path where the RAW template resides.

Using the oVirt admin console, I am able to identify that the template/image has a UUID of, bbb58b82-7252-41e2-9b28-72cbf74d98e4.
There are other CLI tools that allow you to query storage domains and resolve UUIDs to names, however the UI is pretty intuitive for new users.

When you run 'df -h' on an oVirt hypervisor, you can see the mount points used:

pedro-godines.mycompany.com:/home/exports/iso  399G   25G  374G   7% /rhev/data-center/mnt/pedro-godines.mycompany.com:_home_exports_isoterri-wolven.mycompany.com:/home/exports       847G  136G  711G  17% /rhev/data-center/mnt/terri-wolven.mycompany.com:_home_exportsrosie-carreiro.mycompany.com:/home/exports     8.2T  761G  7.4T  10% /rhev/data-center/mnt/rosie-carreiro.mycompany.com:_home_exportsglusterfs.mycompany.com:/gv0                   1.9T   82G  1.8T   5% /rhev/data-center/mnt/glusterSD/glusterfs.mycompany.com:_gv0

In this case the Template is in the GlusterFS "gv0" volume, so I first 'cd' to /rhev/data-center/mnt/rosie-carreiro... and find the directory with the UUID, bbb58b82-7252-41e2-9b28-72cbf74d98e4.

  [root@devops bbb58b82-7252-41e2-9b28-72cbf74d98e4]# ls -ahlt  total 33G  drwxr-xr-x. 9 36 36 4.0K Aug 25 19:08 ..  drwxr-xr-x. 2 36 36 4.0K Aug 25 13:16 .  -rw-r--r--. 1 36 36  318 Aug 25 13:16 4b66fd92-99a6-4651-8288-24f50fd3596a.meta  -rw-rw----. 1 36 36  40G Aug 25 13:16 4b66fd92-99a6-4651-8288-24f50fd3596a  -rw-rw----. 1 36 36 1.0M Aug 25 12:58 4b66fd92-99a6-4651-8288-24f50fd3596a.lease

You can also view the metadata which specifies the format and description.

  [root@devops bbb58b82-7252-41e2-9b28-72cbf74d98e4]# cat 4b66fd92-99a6-4651-8288-24f50fd3596a.meta  DOMAIN=8fe3f7f3-15c9-4376-b20e-5e237b31b185  CTIME=1503680317  FORMAT=RAW  DISKTYPE=2  LEGALITY=LEGAL  SIZE=83886080  VOLTYPE=SHARED  DESCRIPTION={"DiskAlias":"Windows7_Disk1","DiskDescription":""}  IMAGE=bbb58b82-7252-41e2-9b28-72cbf74d98e4  PUUID=00000000-0000-0000-0000-000000000000  MTIME=0  POOL_UUID=  TYPE=SPARSE  GEN=0  EOF

You can now export the template/image to your desired format:

  [root@rosie-carreiro bbb58b82-7252-41e2-9b28-72cbf74d98e4]# qemu-img convert -f raw -O vmdk -o adapter_type=lsilogic 4b66fd92-99a6-4651-8288-24f50fd3596a /root/DevImage-1.1.vmdk
Once completed, verify:  [root@rosie-carreiro bbb58b82-7252-41e2-9b28-72cbf74d98e4]# ls -halt /root/DevImage-1.1.vmdk  -rw-r--r--. 1 root root 33G Aug 27 16:58 /root/DevImage-1.1.vmdk

NOTE: adapter_type=lsilogic is important because qemu-img VMDK output defaults to using IDE.  This means that you cannot later extend the size of the disk in VMware, as the option will actually be grayed out/disabled in vSphere.  Use the lsilogic scsi controller format to support extending your disks.

Setting VirtualBox SMBIOS Settings to match your PC

In some cases you may want your VM to emulate your physical machine.  For example, if you want to set the Serial Number/Service Tag to match your laptop, you can do this with the following steps:

1. sudo dmidecode -t system
2. VBoxManage setextradata "VM name" "VBoxInternal/Devices/pcbios/0/Config/DmiSystemSerial" "#######"

In Step two above, you would not use the #######, but instead use the Serial Number displayed when running dmidecode.

Essentially what we are doing is configuring the SMBIOS (System Management BIOS) on the VirtualMachine to have the same strings/settings as the actual PC.  This can be useful in a scenario in which you are running some software within a virtual machine that expects the hardware to be of a specific vendor or serial number.

More information about the SMBIOS can be found here:

http://www.dmtf.org/sites/default/files/standards/documents/DSP0134_2.7.1.pdf

More information about setting VirtualBox VM SMBIOS data can be found here:

http://www.virtualbox.org/manual/ch09.html#changedmi

And last, more information about how to use dmidecode on your Linux PC can be found here:

https://linux.die.net/man/8/dmidecode

This technique can be used to "spoof" the VM's Product ID, Serial Number, BIOS Version, Manufacturer and really any other SMBIOS value.

DISCLAIMER:

I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY MISUSE OF SOFTWARE COPYRIGHT LAWS RESULTING FROM THE USE OF THIS INFORMATION