[Cialug] making VM images faster

[kristau]

On Sun, Mar 28, 2010 at 11:44 AM, Dave Hala Jr <dave at 58ghz.net> wrote:
> Linux Servers, mostly rhel3, centos 4 and centos 5

If your drives aren't too full, you could save some time during the dd
imaging/restore process by using Clonezilla. You can't, however,
convert the Clonezilla images directly into .vdi files. You'd have to
create new, empty .vdi files when you create the VM's then use
Clonezilla to restore the images into them. The process would look
something like this:

- Boot physical server to Clonezilla CD.
- Image hard drive(s) to an external USB device.
- Create a new VM with appropriate parameters and new virtual disks.
- Boot the VM off of the Clonezilla .iso file.
- Restore the disk images from the external USB device into the new
virtual disks.
. . .
- Profit!

That should:
A) Shorten the 4-5 hours for a dd image
B) Remove the 4-5 hours to convert
C) Replace the 45 minutes to copy the .vdi file onto the host machine
with the Clonezilla restore (which should take about as long as the
image capture took)

later,
kristau