Monday, August 06, 2007

Converting VMware images to Virtualbox format using qemu and vditool

There is no tool that can convert VMware images directly to VirtualBox vdi format without having to do a dump/restore over ssh or something similar, but qemu-img can convert .vmdk VMware images to raw format, and those can be converted to VirtualBox .vdi using vditool.

First, make sure you have qemu installed, and have downloaded vditool.

  1. Convert the VMware image to raw format:
    # qemu-img convert -f vmdk VMwareImage.vmdk -O raw RawImage.img

  2. Convert the RAW image to vdi format.
    # vditool DD Image.vdi RawImage.img
Note: split vmdk images can NOT be converted, so take that into consideration when you create VMware disk images.

Now start up VirtualBox and associate the .vdi image to a new virtual machine. You may need to change the bootloader settings for the OS (disk changes and such).
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1 comment:

  1. Václav Štěpán7:47 PM

    About the split images --- it seems that they can be converted, but it is necessary to merge them first.
    See: http://thedarkmaster.wordpress.com/2007/03/12/vmware-virtual-machine-to-virtual-box-conversion-how-to/ for example.

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