Does virt-v2v support migration from Citrix Xen to RHEV or KVM?

Solution Verified - Updated

Environment

  • virt-v2v
  • Citrix Xen virtual machine

Issue

  • What is the procedure to migrate virtual machines from Xen Citrix to RHEV or KVM? Is this supported?
  • VMwars guests can be migrated to RHEV using virt-v2v utility. Similarly, Is it possible to migrate vms from Citrix Xen ?

Resolution

At the time of this writing, importing virtual machines from Citrix Xen to RHEV is not supported using virt-v2v . However, a workaround is available below using virt-p2v instead.

Please note: The virt-v2v tools do support migrating para-virtualization Xen guests to RHEV. Click for more information on importing Virtual Machines with virt-v2v.

Workaround

Method 1 (Red Hat Recommended)

Treat Citrix Xen VM as physical machine and do P2V conversion. i.e. the same way we'd convert a physical host.

Obtain a P2V iso image, connect it to the guest to be converted in Citrix Xen, and boot the guest under Citrix Xen using the P2V image. The P2V image runs the P2V client.

The P2V client reads local disks and sends data across the network to a conversion host. Note that because this tool is running under Citrix Xen in its native environment, there are no issues surrounding obtaining hypervisor metadata, or needing to parse the underlying disk format.

The conversion host converts the image to run on KVM, and writes it out to a target RHEV or RHEL/libvirt hypervisor. Refer this documentation to know more about p2v migration procedure.

Method 2

Another method of migrating from Citrix Xen to RHEV is to use a 3rd party backup and restore solution such as Acronis Backup or Symantec Ghost. Backup the Citrix image, create a new RHEV VM, then restore the image to the new VM.

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