What Is Virt-v2v and How to Convert VM for KVM?

Virtualization is very popular for IT environment deployment now. There are many virtualization solutions to choose, like VMware vSphere, Citrix XenServer, Red Hat Virtualization, etc. With the development of company, old virtualization solution will be replaced or new platform is added to virtual infrastructure to optimize the performance of business systems.

VM migration is a must-have skill for IT administrators because it is necessary to keep a highly efficient virtual environment. VM can be not only migrated to another host in homogeneous virtual environment but also a host in the heterogeneous virtual environment. Moving VM in virtual environment is good for load balancing and is very also useful when changing virtualization solution. The configuration and data of VMs can be completely saved and business systems can be quickly moved to a new platform.

There are many V2V converters for IT administrators and Virt-V2V is one of them.

What is Virt-V2V?

Virt-V2V is a free tool to let you convert virtual machine to let it work on KVM managed by libvirt, OpenStack, oVirt, Red Hat Virtualization, etc. For example, you can move VM from VMware ESXi or Xen to KVM host with virt-v2v command.

You might ever convert virtual disk for V2V migration, like converting vmdk to qcow2 to migrate from VMware to KVM, while Virt-V2V can let you move the entire virtual machine including virtual disk image and meta file.

Supported guest operating systems for conversions includes:

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5/6/7/8/9, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11, SP4 and later, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 15, Windows 8/8.1/10/11, Windows Server 2008/2008 R2/2012/2012 R2/2016/2019/2022, Debian, Ubuntu, etc.

You can check more specific technical specifications on the website.

How to move VM to KVM with Virt-V2V?

This section will show you how to use Virt-V2V to move VM from VMware to OpenStack as an example.

virt-v2v can run from a Red Hat Enterprise Linux 64-bit host system and must be installed on the host. You can directly install it with yum command.

# yum install -y qemu-kvm libvirt virt-manager virt-v2v

Then you can start to move VM.

1. Check the VM list on ESXi host

#virsh -c esx://root@EXSI_server_IP?no_verify=1 list --all

2. Copy VM to local datastore

This step will generate the xml file and virtual disk.

Create the directory to store file: #mkdir /data

Copy virtual machine: # virt-v2v-copy-to-local -ic esx://root@EXSI_server_IP?no_verify=1 vm_names

3. Convert data for OpenStack

Create directory: # mkdir /data/vms

Convert data: # virt-v2v -i libvirtxml vm_name.xml -o local -os vms/ -of raw

-of: convert virtual disk to raw format

-os: directory

vm_name.xml: the exported xml file in the last step

4. Create new virtual machine on OpenStack

Find the vm_name-sda file and import it to Openstack by RBD > Create volume > import vm_name-sda file > boot VM

How to migrate VM with Vinchin Backup & Recovery?

To move VM from one hypervisor to another, vir-v2v is not the only tool. You can also choose Vinchin Backup & Recovery.

Vinchin Backup & Recovery is a professional virtual environment backup and disaster recovery solution. You can use it to move VM via an easier way and with more options because it allows you to move VM between VMware vSphere, Hyper-V, Proxmox, Citrix XenServer, oVirt, Red Hat Virtualization, OpenStack, Oracle Linux KVM, etc. (Native KVM is not supported for now)

You don't have to use commands to export, convert, or import virtual machine files because you can easily finish all the procedures on a user-friendly web console. Vinchin Backup & Recovery will let you backup virtual machine agentlessly and then you can use that backup file to recover VM on another host like KVM host.

Vinchin Backup & Recovery is very useful for heterogeneous virtual environment management and has been chosen by thousands of companies. You can also easily deploy Vinchin Backup & Recovery in your virtual environment with a 60-day full-featured free trial. Just click the download button to get the installation package.

Sum Up

V2V migration is a useful skill for IT administrators. It is good for load balancing and changing virtualization solution, helping find the best virtual environment for applications and fully migrating VM data.

Virt-V2V is a powerful migration tool which helps move VM from VMware, Xen, Hyper-V to KVM managed by libvirt, OpenStack, oVirt, Red Hat Virtualization, etc.

Of course, you can choose Vinchin Backup & Recovery to move VM via an easier way. Don't miss the free trial.