Importing Converted VHD Virtual Disk to Citrix XenServer

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There is an alternative when it comes to importing a Converted VHD Virtual Disk to Citrix XenServer.

To import a .vhd file to Citrix XenServer you can use an interactive command line utility called vhd2xen. The utility is developed by Acronis.

The vhd2xen utility imports a .vhd file into Citrix XenServer repository of virtual disks. The utility supports importing both to local or remote XenServer repository.

The supported systems are:

  • Citrix XenServer 4.1
  • Citrix XenServer 5
  • Citrix XenServer 5.5

Please note that since Microsoft Virtual PC format has limitations, the same limitations apply to the conversion of TIB to XVA:

  • Volumes bigger than 127 GB in size cannot be converted;
  • SCSI interface cannot be added. You can only use IDE interface.

For information on how to convert a .tib file to .vhd disk please see:

Solution

Installation

  1. Download vhd2xen from https://download.acronis.com/vhd2xen.i686
  2. Start the local command shell of Citrix XenServer;
  3. Copy the installation executable vhd2xen.i686 to a directory;
  4. Run vhd2xen.i686 to install the utility. It will be installed to /usr/lib/Acronis/VHD2XEN/.

Usage

  1. Issue the following command:

    /usr/lib/Acronis/VHD2XEN/vhd2xen.sh [VHD file]

  2. In Citrix XenServer local command shell you will need to specify:

    • Repository from the list of available repositories where the .vhd file should be imported to;
    • XEN name for imported disk.

    (!) To import the .vhd file to a local repository, you should have write permissions to the directory, where the .vhd file is. Otherwise, vhd2xen will fail to import.

Example

  1. Create a directory on Citrix XenServer to mount the Windows share where the .vhd file is:

    mkdir /mnt/shared

  2. Mount the share to the created directory:

    mount.cifs //windows_host/share /mnt/shared -o username=test

    (!) In this example the user test should have write permissions to //windows_host/share

  3. Issue the import command:

    /usr/lib/Acronis/VHD2XEN/vhd2xen.sh /mnt/shared/disk1.vhd

  4. Go to Citrix XenCenter and connect to your Citrix XenServer;

  5. You will find the imported disk in the repository you have selected.

Uninstallation

To uninstall the vhd2xen utility execute the following command:

./vhd2xen.i686 –uninstall

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