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barfoon
Asked: 2009-08-20 08:47:30 +0800 CST

How does XenServer store virtual machines?

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Im currently building a machine that will run Citrix XenServer and host several VM's. The discussion on the comparison to ESXi has been fascinating.

Im wondering - how does XenServer actually store the VM's? Can I move them around to external drives / duplicate them easily?

Also, can existing VM's from lets say Parallels be imported into the hypervisor?

Thanks,

virtualization

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    It'll use either LVM or files-as-block-devices. Either are trivial to copy, whether or not you can move it to an external drive depends on what hardware you've got, and what you want to achieve.

    Existing fully-virtualised VMs from other systems can be "imported", in the sense that what was previously running on another system can be made to run in Xen. It may require significant jiggling to make that work, though, depending on what you're moving from.

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