Installation guide

Chapter 23.
171
Migrating to KVM from other
hypervisors using virt-v2v
The virt-v2v command converts guests from a foreign hypervisor to run on KVM, managed by
libvirt. The virt-v2v command can currently convert Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4, Red Hat Enterprise
Linux 5, Windows Vista, Windows 7, Windows Server 2003 and Windows Server 2008 virtualized
guests running on Xen, KVM and VMware ESX. The virt-v2v command enables para-virtualized
(virtio) drivers in the converted guest if possible.
virt-v2v is available on Red Hat Network (RHN) in the Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server (v. 6 for
64-bit x86_64) or Red Hat Enterprise Linux Workstation (v.6 for x86_64) channel.
The virt-v2v tool requires root access to the host system.
Installing virt-v2v
To install virt-v2v from RHN, ensure the system is subscribed to the appropriate channel, then run:
yum install virt-v2v
23.1. Preparing to convert a virtualized guest
Before a virtualized guest can be converted, ensure that the following steps are completed.
1. Create a local storage domain for transferred storage
virt-v2v copies the guest storage to a locally defined libvirt storage pool during import. This
pool can be defined using any libvirt tool, and can be of any type. The simplest way to create a
new pool is with virt-manager. Select your host, right click and select details.
Figure 23.1. Select host details
Select the Storage tab.