nixCraft

Here are the steps for converting Vmware windows/linux guest to Xen format. You need qemu-img tool for the conversion. If you are converting a Windows vmware vm, on the vmware guest, do the 4 steps as per the doc here. This includes some registry changes and copying few files.

Conversion steps:

1) Halt the vmware VM . Check the format of the vmware vmdk file

2) If the file format is “raw”, we need not convert the image file using qemu-img convert, just rename to .img file. If it is not “raw”, use “qemu-img” to convert the image to raw format.

3) How to convert using qemu-img.

[root@vm_s7 guest22]# qemu-img convert guest22-flat.vmdk -O raw /volumes/guest22/guest22.img

4) Create xen config file in /etc/xen/guest22 , with the renamed/converted image file as disk.


5) Boot up the xen domU guest. It should boot up fine.

More detailed steps @ unix - linux - storage: Vmware to Xen Conversion