Hi!
Yes, you can.
You can virtualize an existing windows/linux installation with qemu / kvm.
This isn’t a real news but here I write a very basic/fast tutorial.
Basically you have to choose between:
- use your linux/windows hd by moving it to your kvm host server
- convert your linux/windows to a kvm image (qcow2, row, ecc.) and run it on your kvm host server
For the first choice the answer is simple: just use kvm’s -hda (or -drive) argument and point to your disk. Kvm and qemu can use a real hd without problems.
In order to convert an existing partition/disk to a qemu / kvm image (second choice) you have to follow these steps:
- shutdown your linux/windows machine and reboot from cd with a live distro (use SystemRescueCd to follow this tutorial)
- create a new folder to mount the image destination folder, it can’t be on our machine disk… we have to create our new kvm/qemu image from it!
mkdir /mnt/image-dest - mount a remote samba partition with cifs in your destination folder (mount -t cifs //192.168.1.x/your-samba-share-name) or mount an usb drive, or a nfs partition, or your smartphone, that doesn’t matter!
You only need to transfer your windows/linux disk image to your qemu / kvm host. - umount your windows/linux partitions if one is mounted for any reason
- create your disk raw image with dd from winows/linux disk; note that you have to copy ALL disk, not only a single partition. For example, if you have 3 partitions (/boot hda1 / hda2 and swap hda3) you have to use dd on your disk device, not on partitions. Wrong: dd if=/dev/hda1. Correct: dd if=/dev/hda. Please note that with dd you can kill your cat, burn your sister and immediately join Forza Italia. Use it with care!
dd if=/dev/hda of=/mnt/image-dest/kvm-image.raw - fire up your kvm raw image: this may vary based on your source machine hardware configuration, if you have problems with missing partitions errors on your guest os boot phase just look at kvm / qemu -drive options (man kvm);
kvm -drive file=/path/to/your/kvm-image.raw format=raw media=disk - optionally convert your raw image to other formats with kvm-img
Note that this process can be slow if your source disk is very large, in that case I think you can use a tool like parted to reduce partitions size and then copy only used disk space with a combo of dd’s ibs and count (untested).
Happy virtualization to you
Tags: kvm, qemu, virtualization, kvm image, windows partition to kvm image, linux partition to kvm image, convert disk in image for kvm qemu
