Converting VirtualBox VM to a Xen Hypervisor Virtual Machine | ServerStack https://www.serverstack.com/blog/2012/11/20/converting-virtualbox-vm-...

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2012

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VirtualBox is one of the easiest virtualization platforms in use today. With

graphical user interface, cross-platform support, and comprehensive
documentation online, it is also one of the most obvious choices for a
developer. So how do you scale this virtual machine from your workstation to a
development server?

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The process is relative straightforward and involves simple steps:

Step 1: Locate the VDI files location from Virtual Machines setting in
VirtualBox. In our example, the VM is CentOS 6.3, disk image name is
centos6.vdi and it uses 654 MB of space. The Virtual Size is the amount
of space this disk image will use when converted to RAW format:

Step 2: Compress the .vdi file of your VM with WinRAR using Best
Compression method. This reduced our VDI file from 654 MB to 158 MB
RAR archive:

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Step 3: Upload the archived disk image (centos6.rar) to your Xen server
via SFTP / SCP, and extract centos6.vdi to your Xen image folder (e.g.
/var/lib/xen/images/ ). You might have to install unrar for your distribution
of Linux or download directly from RarLab:
# wget http://rarlab.com/rar/rarlinux-x64-4.2.0.tar.gz && tar xvfz rarlinux-x64-4.2.0.tar.gz
# cp rar/unrar /usr/bin/
# cd /var/lib/xen/images && unrar e centos6.rar
Extracting centos6.vdi
OK
All OK

Step 4: Download and install VirtualBox on the Xen server. This may seem
a bit redundant, but we are really just interested in VBoxManage tool
supplied with it. On CentOS hypervisor, install the necessary libraries and
download VirtualBox 4.2 or whichever is latest:
# yum -y install qt libXmu && rpm -ivh http://download.virtualbox.org/virtualbox/4.2.4/VirtualBox-4.2-4.2.4_81684_el6-1.
This should give you VBoxManage utility:
# ls -l /usr/lib/virtualbox/VBoxManage
-rwxr-xr-x 1 root root 758384 Oct 26 12:17 /usr/lib/virtualbox/VBoxManage
Now you can convert your VDI disk image to a RAW disk image that you will use
for Xen VM:
# cd /var/lib/xen/images
# /usr/lib/virtualbox/VBoxManage clonehd centos6.vdi centos6.img -format RAW
0%...10%...20%...30%...40%...50%...60%...70%...80%...90%...100%
Clone hard disk created in format 'RAW'. UUID: f220932f-8750-4f5b-b220-8050210e9835

Step 5: Refer to the centos6.vbox file, and create the configuration file for
Xen VM. You can do this manually or create a shell script that would

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uuid = "f220932f-8750-4f5b-b220-8050210e9835"
memory = 1024
vcpus = 1
bootloader = "/usr/bin/pygrub"
on_poweroff = "destroy"
on_reboot = "restart"
on_crash = "restart"
disk = [ "file:/var/lib/xen/images/centos6.img,xvda,w" ]
vif = [ "mac=00:16:3e:46:e6:fb,bridge=xenbr0" ]
extra="console=hvc0"

Step 6: Create your Xen VM using the configuration file and the RAW
image:
# cd /etc/xen/
# xm create centos6
Using config file "./centos6".
Started domain centos6 (id=16)

Step 7: Verify that everything is working as expected:

The virtual machine is up and running on a Xen hypervisor. This simplifies the
entire process, as you can develop your entire virtual machine on your
workstation, and have it up and running on a production hypervisor without
having to migrate individual services manually.

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3/19/2015 4:21 PM