From One to Another: How to Convert Virtual Machine Disk Images

Move Your VMs Between Different Virtualization Platforms

There are many virtualization tools available, such as KVM, VirtualBox, and VMware, and each uses its own format for virtual hard disk images. What if you’ve created a VM in KVM but need to run it in VirtualBox on a Windows machine? As the ‘Ubuntu System Administration Guide’ demonstrates, you can easily convert these disk images.

Using the ‘qemu-img’ Tool

Ubuntu includes a powerful command-line utility called `qemu-img` that can convert between various virtual disk formats. For example, KVM’s native format is `qcow2`, while VMware uses `vmdk`. To convert a KVM image to a format compatible with VMware, you would run a command like this:

qemu-img convert -p -f qcow2 -O vmdk your_vm.qcow2 your_vm.vmdk

This flexibility ensures that your virtual machines are not locked into a single platform. You can create a VM in one environment and easily migrate it to another, providing incredible portability for your virtualized systems.

---

This post is based from content of the book Ubuntu System adminstration guide. And the book can be found here https://www.amazon.com/stores/Mattias-Hemmingsson/author/B0FF5CQX13