12.8. Sharing virtual machine disk images with other hosts

Procedure

1. Connect to the host that will provide shared storage. In this example, it is the example-shared-storage host:

   # ssh root@example-shared-storage
   root@example-shared-storage's password:
   Last login: Mon Sep 24 12:05:36 2019
   root~#

2. Create a directory on the example-shared-storage host that will hold the disk image and that will be shared with the migration hosts:

   # mkdir /var/lib/libvirt/shared-images

3. Copy the disk image of the VM from the source host to the newly created directory. The following example copies the disk image example-disk-1 of the VM to the /var/lib/libvirt/shared-images/ directory of the example-shared-storage host:

   # scp /var/lib/libvirt/images/example-disk-1.qcow2 root@example-shared-storage:/var/lib/libvirt/shared-images/example-disk-1.qcow2

4. On the host that you want to use for sharing the storage, add the sharing directory to the /etc/exports file. The following example shares the /var/lib/libvirt/shared-images directory with the example-source-machine and example-destination-machine hosts:

   # /var/lib/libvirt/shared-images example-source-machine(rw,no_root_squash) example-destination-machine(rw,no\_root_squash)

5. Run the exportfs -a command for the changes in the /etc/exports file to take effect.

   # exportfs -a

6. On both the source and destination host, mount the shared directory in the /var/lib/libvirt/images directory:

   # mount example-shared-storage:/var/lib/libvirt/shared-images /var/lib/libvirt/images