What's the easiest/quickest way to clone a VM from one server onto another if you don't have shared storage between the two servers (so you can't do a standard migration)?
I have a production ready VM installed on one server, and I want to clone it onto another system. I don't have shared storage between the two hosts, but I've copied the disk image between the two hosts and added a config for it (virsh defined it). When I try to start it however it doesn't take:
# virsh create /etc/libvirt/qemu/cloned-vm.xml
error: Failed to create domain from /etc/libvirt/qemu/cloned-vm.xml
error: Unable to read from monitor: Connection reset by peer
I'm using KVM on RHEL6. Here is the duplicated config
<!-- WARNING: THIS IS AN AUTO-GENERATED FILE. CHANGES TO IT ARE LIKELY TO BE OVERWRITTEN AND LOST. Changes to this xml configuration should be made using: virsh edit or other application using the libvirt API. --> <domain type='kvm'> <name>cloned-vm</name> <uuid>NEW_UUID_HERE</uuid> <memory>15360000</memory> <currentMemory>15360000</currentMemory> <vcpu>7</vcpu> <os> <type arch='x86_64' machine='rhel6.2.0'>hvm</type> <boot dev='hd'/> </os> <features> <acpi/> <apic/> <pae/> </features> <clock offset='utc'/> <on_poweroff>destroy</on_poweroff> <on_reboot>restart</on_reboot> <on_crash>restart</on_crash> <devices> <emulator>/usr/libexec/qemu-kvm</emulator> <disk type='file' device='disk'> <driver name='qemu' type='raw' cache='none'/> <source file='/local/vm/cloned-vm.img'/> <target dev='vda' bus='virtio'/> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x04' function='0x0'/> </disk> <interface type='bridge'> <mac address='NE:W_:MA:C_:AD:DR'/> <source bridge='br2'/> <model type='virtio'/> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x03' function='0x0'/> </interface> <serial type='pty'> <target port='0'/> </serial> <console type='pty'> <target type='serial' port='0'/> </console> <input type='tablet' bus='usb'/> <input type='mouse' bus='ps2'/> <graphics type='vnc' port='-1' autoport='yes'/> <video> <model type='cirrus' vram='9216' heads='1'/> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x02' function='0x0'/> </video> <memballoon model='virtio'> <address type='pci' domain='0x0000' bus='0x00' slot='0x05' function='0x0'/> </memballoon> </devices> </domain>
Best Answer
And here is what I do where $VM is the VM name, and DEST is the destination hypervisor hostname. It does this on running VMs using dd and snapshot LVM disks (It is assuming that the LVM Group is called HypGroup00).
I just threw this together, so it isn't necessarily the prettiest, but does the job, I'm using it to migrate some VMs from a CentOS 5.9 hypervisor to CentOS 6 with minimal downtime.
This is for CentOS 5.9, tested on going to CentOS 5 and 6 as a destination.
Figure out which disks to copy, since most of our VM disks are referenced via the /dev/mapper/ path rather than the /dev/volgroup/volname path. So we need to translate between the two.
Copy over the VM definition and register it
Now create the LV on the remote server
Now create the snapshot LVs and start copying over the data
Copy the disks across
A more complex version of the above that shows progress if required from dd, no good for multiple copies because of /tmp/pid, but you can change to to include $$ if you wish.
Clean up