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mnml
Asked: 2010-12-21 03:04:39 +0800 CST

EC2 VM import: VirtualBox

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I would like to know if it's currently possible to import a virtualbox vm on the ec2 cloud, I have tried with a virtualbox vmdk but it did not succed. Apparently it is designed for VMware's vmdk files.

Is there a trick I could use to convert my instance and import it on amazon?

Thanks !

virtualization amazon-ec2 virtualbox virtual-machines import

4 Answers

  1. Alternatively there's this:

    http://www.ioncannon.net/system-administration/1246/converting-from-virtualbox-or-vmware-to-ec2-now-easier-than-ever/

    which sounds like if you just have an EC2 compatible kernel...

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  2. There is the standalone vmware converter that will convert between different virtual machine formats.

    You may also want to read this which gives information on how to convert from vmware images to ec2 AMIs

    Or do it directly with this

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  3. There are some options to upload virtual box based VMs.

    One of them is to use live capture tools. Run it from your guest machine to form an Amazon compatible image. The tool to use highly depends on your guest OS:

    Unfortunately, Amazon EC2 cloud doesn't support more OS types. Try other cloud vendors like CloudSigma or ElasticHosts to run non-standard Windows Servers editions (like Storage Server) or other "geeky" OS like FreeBSD.

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  4. Many years have passed since this answer was posted, but I thought I would add an answer in case anyone ends up here.

    AWS now supports uploading VMDKs to S3 and booting it up into an EC2 instance...

    https://docs.aws.amazon.com/vm-import/latest/userguide/vmimport-instance-import.html

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