[virt-tools-list] virt-v2v questions

[Kenneth Armstrong]

> virt-v2v doesn't support export from RHEV, only import. However, it doesn't sound like you need V2V here. Once you've
> exported the VM to an export storage domain, you can simply back up the files in the export storage domain. tar would work > as well as anything else here.

Thanks Matt.  Rich squared me away on not using virt-v2v for this.  My
current question is how would I copy a logical volume onto an external
storage unit.  Since it isn't a file on a filesystem, I'm not sure how
to go about doing this.  I'm also going to research virt-inspector per
Rich's input on how to give a more reasonable name to the disk images
that RHEV exports.

Thanks again.


On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 9:15 AM, Kenneth Armstrong <digimars at gmail.com> wrote:
>> Not sure what the difference is.  A shut down VM consists of just the
>> disk image(s) and the hypervisor-specific configuration file.  The
>> configuration file isn't really necessary, since you could reconstruct
>> all the information in it (with some effort) by inspecting the disk
>> image.
>
> I'm going to look into virt-inspector (just installed it) to see what
> that all entails.  Currently, RHEV is still using VDSM and not libvirt
> explicitly yet, so I can't do an XML dump of a VM as far as I know.
>
> How would I go about copying a logical volume off of a remote server
> through SSH (or some other means)?
>
>> This seems like a very RHEV-M-specific question, but AFAIK RHEV-M just
>> uses qcow2 format files stored in logical volumes.  qcow2 is about as
>> portable and standard as it comes ("raw" being the only thing that is
>> more portable and widely supported, and you can convert from qcow2 to
>> raw with perfect fidelity using 'qemu-img convert').
>
> I'm just using RAW for my disk images (for the speed, and I have
> enough storage to pull it off).
>
> Thanks again for your help.
>
>
> On Tue, Nov 2, 2010 at 9:09 AM, Richard W.M. Jones <rjones at redhat.com> wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 02, 2010 at 08:51:41AM -0400, Kenneth Armstrong wrote:
>>> Are you saying just back up the contents of the VM itself or back up
>>> the VM as a whole?
>>
>> Not sure what the difference is.  A shut down VM consists of just the
>> disk image(s) and the hypervisor-specific configuration file.  The
>> configuration file isn't really necessary, since you could reconstruct
>> all the information in it (with some effort) by inspecting the disk
>> image.
>>
>>> I'd like to find a way to just give the VM a
>>> proper name (I'll look into virt-inspector, thanks for that) and copy
>>> the logical volumes that make up the VM disks onto an external media.
>>> Of course, I would have to use something else at a later time to
>>> import the VM's back into RHEV or a KVM server later should I need to,
>>> but for now I would like to get them off of my export storage domain
>>> and store them in a more portable format than what RHEV does.
>>
>> This seems like a very RHEV-M-specific question, but AFAIK RHEV-M just
>> uses qcow2 format files stored in logical volumes.  qcow2 is about as
>> portable and standard as it comes ("raw" being the only thing that is
>> more portable and widely supported, and you can convert from qcow2 to
>> raw with perfect fidelity using 'qemu-img convert').
>>
>> Rich.
>>
>> --
>> Richard Jones, Virtualization Group, Red Hat http://people.redhat.com/~rjones
>> New in Fedora 11: Fedora Windows cross-compiler. Compile Windows
>> programs, test, and build Windows installers. Over 70 libraries supprt'd
>> http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/MinGW http://www.annexia.org/fedora_mingw
>>
>