----- Original Message ----- > From: "Dale Amon" <amon@xxxxxxx> > To: "Andrew Cathrow" <acathrow@xxxxxxxxxx> > Cc: "Dale Amon" <amon@xxxxxxx>, libvirt-users@xxxxxxxxxx, "Eric Blake" <eblake@xxxxxxxxxx> > Sent: Monday, April 2, 2012 8:24:16 PM > Subject: Re: Reality check requested... > > On Mon, Apr 02, 2012 at 04:11:17PM -0400, Andrew Cathrow wrote: > > The disk format should be fine but the VM may not work you didn't > > say what kind of VM it is - for example is it KVM/Xen/etc > > VMware uses different emulated hardware and different drivers so > > your mileage my vary. > > This particular test was a linux Ubuntu server built > this weekend via virt-manager. The goal is to be able > to build a disk with the tools I have in linux and > ship it to someone who is running a current licensed > ESX version. > > I had the impression that libvirt could handle a vmdk > from a VMware server; but can it go the other way? it's not about libvirt it's about your hypervisor. You say virt-manager but that could be kvm, qemu or xen. I'll presume kvm for now. KVM emulates a different set of hardware components than VMware does - eg. PIIX3 chipset, IDE (or virtio), ich9 (or maybe ac96/es1379) soundcard, etc When you take a VM from one platform to another it will see different hardware - eg. it might see SCSI on VMware. Linux is much better than Windows at adjusting to hardware changes but you have to be careful about how you configure the guest - eg. use emulation (IDE) rather that paravirt devices (VirtIO) that means you lose performance but are more likely for the VM to boot on VMware. > > >
