Problems importing VHD file to VDI through CLI

[Simon Demuynck]

Hello all!
I am a student at HOWEST Belgium studying Multimedia and Creative Technologies as IOT and Infrastructure engineer and was given the assignment to research the migration from vSphere to Citrix Xencenter.

 

I have successfully managed to import vSphere machines to Xencenter using the GUI, but I am struggling to automate things through the CLI.
I'm trying to import a VHD file to my newly created VM's VDI (which was made through the CLI)
I've given the VDI 25GB which is more than sufficient for the 12GB VHD upload i want to import.

I have tried the following;

 

1.  Using the xe vm-install template="Ubuntu Bionic Beaver 18.04" new-name-label="Ubuntu-CLI" command to create a virtual machine
   1. xe vdi-resize uuid=3498dc9a-da28-485f-b11f-a8285ae0099e disk-size=25GiB resizing it to 25GB
   2. xe vdi-import uuid=d49da951-4560-4a4b-b86b-4811ba6772a2 filename=/mnt/VMDKShare/UbuntuVM-1.vhd format=vhd --progress to import my own VHD (converted from vSphere VMDK)
      1. resulting in the following error: 
2.  Using the xe vm-install template="Ubuntu Bionic Beaver 18.04" new-name-label="Ubuntu-CLI" command to create a virtual machine
   1. Removing the disk through the GUI
   2. Adding a new disk with xe vdi-create sr-uuid=e7870991-edf0-c489-c6cd-c7c1ea6afb93 name-label=UbuntuVM_Disk1 type=system virtual-size=25000000 3af2f10b-6ad3-da15-1a32-d3102d791412
   3. Uploading my own VHD again with xe vdi-import uuid=d49da951-4560-4a4b-b86b-4811ba6772a2 filename=/mnt/VMDKShare/UbuntuVM-1.vhd format=vhd --progress to import my own VHD (converted from vSphere VMDK)
      1. resulting in the same error: 
3. Tried to import a VMDK, OVF or VHD file through the cli with xe vm-import filename=/mnt/VMDKShare/Win10-TestVM.vmdk sr-uuid=e7870991-edf0-c489-c6cd-c7c1ea6afb93
   1. Resulting in the following error: 
4. Created a Virtual Machine through the GUI with the VMDK import, booting perfectly fine, finding the VHD file coupled to the VDI, removed the VDI and copied my own VDI and pasted it in the same directory with the same UUID. This just failed to boot the VM..
   1. 

 

I'm wondering if I'm doing something wrong, am I using the commands wrong? Am I missing parameters?

I'm hoping to hear back from you soon!

 

Kind Regards,

Simon Demuynck

[Simon Demuynck]

Found a working solution to the problem.
Looks like you can VDI Import a VMDK file with format=raw. the --progress however does not work up until the file is done uploading.

 

Thanks for the support provided to the people that commented on this thread, I can now continue my project and start automating ?

 

Regards,

 

Simon Demuynck

[Tobias Kreidl]

Did you remove the VMware tools before exporting the VM?

[Simon Demuynck]

Hi Tobias,

 

VMware tools were not present on the Virtual machine. Nor were they installed in vSphere.

Any way I can double check just to make sure?

 

Edit: found it in a vsphere warning

 

[Tobias Kreidl]

OK, IS that version of Ubuntu 18 supported on the XS/CH version you are trying to run it on? (Sorry, had to ask that!)

[Simon Demuynck]

Yes, it runs perfectly with GUI import, and no worries ?

[Tobias Kreidl]

Maybe there's some missing hotfix? The same export works with the GUI but not with the CLI, which is very odd.

[Simon Demuynck]

Indeed, i cannot get it to import to the VDI, nor successfully replace the VHD of the existing VDI and boot, i also tried it from local storage instead of NFS but no luck either.

[Tobias Kreidl]

You could try exporting just the VM w/o storage, independently export using vdi-export the VDI, import it and attach it to the VM.

Lot of extra work, but it might help clarify things a bit.

 

-=Tobias

[Simon Demuynck]

How would i go about importing my own VHD to the VDI?
Exporting is not my problem, its the import that keeps failing.

 

The thing I am trying to accomplish is export a VM from vSphere and trying to import it to XC without having dataloss on the drive.

[Tobias Kreidl]

You'd export just the VM without the connected storage, and import it. You'd export the VDI and import it separately, and attach it to the VM.

 

-=Tobias

[Simon Demuynck]

Ah thanks, that makes more sense to me!
I'll go ahead and give that a try.

 

I'll post back with further details ?

[Simon Demuynck]

Looks like I have the same issue as before. Created a VDI separately, tried to import the VHD and I get the same error again..

[Simon Demuynck]

Looks like the Hypervisor is doing some shady stuff.. (same error, more info)

So for some reason the Hypervisor is closing the transfer connection when trying to create a VM?
I figured out it is running iptables as firewall, but disabling it did nothing.
Any idea why it would do that? And what a possible fix might be?

 

EDIT:
I also tried a converted VMDK to IMG file with qemu-img on the vm-import which prompts the exact same error.

 

Thanks in advance!

 

Simon Demuynck

[Tobias Kreidl]

9 hours ago, Simon Demuynck said:

Found a working solution to the problem.
Looks like you can VDI Import a VMDK file with format=raw. the --progress however does not work up until the file is done uploading.

 

Thanks for the support provided to the people that commented on this thread, I can now continue my project and start automating ?

 

Regards,

 

Simon Demuynck

Yeah, I thought importing the VDI separately might be a good option. Glad that worked for you.

-=Tobias