Chapter 1. Introducing V2V
Warning
The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 version of the virt-v2v utility has been deprecated. Users of Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 are advised to create a Red Hat Enterprise 7 virtual machine, and install virt-v2v in that virtual machine. The Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 version is fully supported and documented in virt-v2v Knowledgebase articles.
V2V is an acronym for virtual to virtual, referring to the process of importing virtual machines from one virtualization platform to another. Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are capable of performing V2V operations using the
virt-v2v command.
1.1. What is virt-v2v?
The
virt-v2v command converts virtual machines from a foreign hypervisor to run on KVM, managed by Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization or libvirt. virt-v2v can currently convert virtual machines running Red Hat Enterprise Linux and Windows on Xen, KVM and VMware ESX / ESX(i) hypervisors. virt-v2v enables paravirtualized (virtio) drivers in the converted virtual machine if possible.
The following guest operating systems are supported by
virt-v2v:
Supported guest operating systems:
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 3.9
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6
- Windows XP
- Windows Vista
- Windows 7
- Windows Server 2003
- Windows Server 2008
All minor releases of the above guest operating systems are supported by
virt-v2v.
The following source hypervisors are supported by
virt-v2v:
Supported source hypervisors:
Unless otherwise specified, all minor releases of the following source hypervisors are supported by
virt-v2v:
- Xen — all versions released by Red Hat
- KVM — all versions released by Red Hat
- VMware ESX / ESX(i) — versions 3.5, 4.0, 4.1, 5.0, 5.1
