[PVE-User] Proxmox, documentation and Howtos

[Martin Maurer]

Hi,

> -----Original Message-----
> From: pve-user-bounces at pve.proxmox.com [mailto:pve-user-
> bounces at pve.proxmox.com] On Behalf Of reine hålldin
> Sent: Wednesday, April 23, 2008 2:26 PM
> To: pve-user at pve.proxmox.com
> Subject: [PVE-User] Proxmox, documentation and Howtos
> 
> Hi,
> 
> 
> Rely like the idea with Proxmox VE, but find the documentation is
> lacking.
[Martin Maurer] 
We constantly improving this and everybody is invited to put experiences in the Proxmox VE wiki.

> So I have a few questions:
> 
> How old/young is this project?

[Martin Maurer] 
Proxmox VE development started last year (summer 2007). The first public beta was released just one week ago. The used technologies are quite stable and have a long successful history.
We expect the first stable Proxmox VE in summer 2008. The beta version can be used already but do not expect everything as stable.

> 
> QEMU and KVM supports a broad range of virtual disk formats as far as I
> know, but how do I import and configure them and where should I put
> them?
[Martin Maurer] 
I suggest you create a KVM virtual machine via the web interface and then examine the following dir´s: 

- /var/lib/vz/images (here are the diskimage files).
- /etc/qemu-server (here are the configs)

Example: 

proxmox-104:/etc/qemu-server# cat 108.conf
ostype: wxp
network: model=virtio,tap
memory: 512
onboot: 0
cdrom: none
name: winxp
hda: /var/lib/vz/images/vm-108-default.qcow2


> Or may be its better to convert VMWare files to a native format?
> But then on the other hand, where do I find information on “howto” do
> that?
> 
> Can an ISO be mounted form the web interface?
> Would be nice if one could ”mount” an ISO that's local to the host OR
> local to the Client.
[Martin Maurer] 
You can use the CDRom on the Proxmox VE host or you can upload ISO images to the Proxmox VE host (via web interface or via scp: the ISO images are stored here: /var/lib/vz/template/iso)
The use of the client cdrom is not possible.

> 
> Would be nice if there were some way to handle USB from the GUI
> 
> I have quite a few VMWare machines I would like to import.
> 
> Is it possible to convert a VMWare Linux to a VZ ?

[Martin Maurer] 
You mean converting a VMware machine or a physical machine to a container (OpenVZ) - or VMware to Container (OpenVZ)? yes, please see http://wiki.openvz.org/Physical_to_container

> 
> Is there any P2virtual tools available that exports to KVM or VZ.

[Martin Maurer]
For example, you can use free tools to convert physical machines to VMware (using VMware converter) as a first step.
 
Migration from VMware to KVM is possible, there are a lot of descriptions around (just google) - here is just a short description:

1. Prepare your OS (windows?) to boot from IDE instead of SCSI, there are some HAL issues, depends on your windows installation. If you skip this you will have a blue screen.
2. Build a single vmdk file with vmware disk tools.
3. Move this file to Proxmox VE, convert this vmdk file with qemu-img to qcow2.
4. Create a Proxmox VE Virtual Machine and then replace the disk file with the previously prepared disk image (edit /etc/qemu-server/xxx.conf)

But I do not recommend to run this in an production environment yet. As a basic rule, Container virtualization is quite stable and it is the preferred way to run Linux servers - all certified Appliance will be based on OpenVZ. If you need full virtualization for windows, KVM is the choice.

Best regards,
Martin

> 
> Lots of questions but this is indeed interesting, and indeed a snug fit
> for us if we can  work it out.
> 
> Best regards
> 
> 
> 
> --
> reine hålldin
> IT Resource