Import/Export

It is desirable to share a single virtual box across multiple physical machines and import an existing box to run locally.

Participants

Design: JakubSteiner

Goals

• copy/sync VMs across multiple computers

Use Cases

• Skip the OS install and customization for a VM by simply copying a fully set up box/template over to a new machine.
• Download a fully set up VM from a company website, skipping installation and setup.

• Take VM along on a business trip (workstation>notebook>workstation)

Non Goals / Future Goals

• Distribute applications as VMs

• Single VM accessible from multiple machines (Remotely managed VM/brokers). => ovirt/rhevm

Relevant Art

Tentative Design

Exporting relies on the Sharing pattern, which is sadly still in its infancy and will be prone to change.

Notes & FIXMEs

• For the travelling VM use case, I would just import & delete old version rather than dealing with local synchronization/hooking up to snapshots.

See Also

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Virtualization_Format

• https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=677691

• Sharing pattern