Citrix XenConvert Guide. Physical Machine to OVF Package Convert a physical machine to an OVF Package that is optionally encrypted, compressed, and/or signed. Start the XenConvert Wizard (for details, refer to Converting From a Physical Machine.) 2. On the Welcome to Citrix XenConvert dialog, choose the following.
Applicable Products
- XenServer
Objective
Importing Virtual Machines (VMs) using XenConvert imports to the default Storage Repository (SR) selected in XenCenter for the appropriate XenServer. If the servers are in a pool, manually importing with the following procedure works around the default SR requirement if required to import to an SR other than the default.
XenConvert requires a default SR to be selected when the selection to import a VM to a XenServer is selected. When multiple XenServer’s are in a pool, the default SR is the shared SR and the local SR is not an option. To import to an SR other than the default, use 2.0.3 XenConvert to convert to an XVA (ova.xml + disk chunks) and import using following xe commands. ![Citrix Xenconvert 2.0.1 Citrix Xenconvert 2.0.1](/uploads/1/2/6/3/126341848/366052769.jpg)
OVA File Formats
It is important to understand the Open Virtual Machine format (OVA) as it could mean two things – ova.xml or .ova.- Ova.xml is a file that is part of the original XVA (aka XVA V1) format. (XVA V2 is a single .xva file). Ova.xml is the format that xe vm-import accepts.
- An .ova file is a single file archive of the files that comprise an OVF Package.
- XenConvert is phasing out usage of ova.xml.
- XenConvert 2.0 does support importing ova.xml.
- XenConvert 2.1 does not support importing ova.xml but does support importing .ova.
- With XenConvert 2.1, one has to temporarily change the default SR first.
- If it is XenServer 5.6 Beta, then XenCenter includes a new OVF plug-in that can import .ovf or .ova created by XenConvert.
Instructions
Complete the following procedure to import a VM to an SR other than the default SR for XenServer’s in pool.
- Download and install the XenConvert version 2.0.3 on the physical host machine.
- Select to convert physical machine to an XVA (ova.xml plus disk chunks).
- Put the exported ova.xml plus disk chunks in a folder to share in Windows.
- Share the folder in which you located the ova.xml + disk chunks.
- On XenServer where you want to import the VM, identify the SR Universally Unique Identifier (UUID) to use as the destination with the following command:
xe sr-list name-label=<name of your SR> - Create a CIFS share in XenServer and mount the Windows share as described below:
- Make a target directory for the CIFS share with the following command:
mkdir /tmp/cifsmount. - Mount the CIFS share with following command:
mount –t cifs //<IP or FQDN of target machine>/share /tmp/cifsmount –o username=user,password=<password> - Navigate the CIFS share and see if you can see the files with the following command:Screen shot:
ls /tmp/cifsmount.
- Import the VM using the following xe command :
xe vm-import filename=/tmp/cifsshare/<name of ova.xml> force=true sr-uuid=<uuid of desitination SR> preserve=true
The VM must import to your XenServer and SR.
![2.0.1 2.0.1](http://www.poppelgaard.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Screen-Shot-2013-09-05-at-6.54.08-AM-929x1024-768x847.png)
Additional Resources
- CTX121646 - Citrix XenConvert 2.1.1
- CTX120520 - How to Export a Virtual Machine to an External USB Drive