How do I import a VM appliance in OVF?

[leckyBill]

I would like to make use of pre-build turnkey appliance VMs. Can I import OVF or is there a repo of turnkey VMs that can be added to Scale?

 

[morganL]

There are generic kvm tools that do this type of conversion. https://wiki.hackzine.org/sysadmin/kvm-import-ova.html

 

[leckyBill]

There are generic kvm tools that do this type of conversion. https://wiki.hackzine.org/sysadmin/kvm-import-ova.html

Great, that's how I convert it, but how do I import it into Scale? The Virtualization UI only seems to have ability to create new VMs

 

[beagle]

On this thread I listed a couple of features for VM management that I miss on Scale and I created tickets requesting these features:

https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/are-these-virtualization-features-on-the-roadmap.90063/

If you'd like to see any of these features implemented please vote for them on Jira.

This ticket is for the OVA import feature you are looking for:
https://jira.ixsystems.com/browse/NAS-110442

 

[morganL]

Right now this importation would be a manual process.. the UI/API needs some additions
After the initial SCALE documentation is available (planned for 21.06), we'll see if we can add this. In the meantime, it will need a community contribution to this thread.

 

[leckyBill]

Right now this importation would be a manual process.. the UI/API needs some additions
After the initial SCALE documentation is available (planned for 21.06), we'll see if we can add this. In the meantime, it will need a community contribution to this thread.

OK, Thanks. Is it a complicated manual process right now? I tried creating a new VM with existing disks but is didn't really work and this is just part of what needs to be imported. I tried to map other details from the OVF, but not everything maps well. In the end the VM would not let me save and I wasn't able to work out what the problems was. No errors, just no save, the button did nothing.

 

[Trexx]

Right now this importation would be a manual process.. the UI/API needs some additions
After the initial SCALE documentation is available (planned for 21.06), we'll see if we can add this. In the meantime, it will need a community contribution to this thread.

Thanks for giving some rough ideas on timing of when some of the enhancements might be able to start being looked at.

 

[Witzker]

Hi
21.05.22 - Any news?
Is it now possible to import a Turnkey OVA in TrueNAS scale?

 

[Witzker]

Any news?

 

[Patrick M. Hausen]

An OVF is just a tar archive with a disk image and some metadata inside. A local installation of qemu on your desktop/laptop should bring the tools to convert vmdk to raw. Then you could create a VM in the SCALE UI and afterwards dd the raw disk image to the zvol.

 

[Xenouniv3rse]

An OVF is just a tar archive with a disk image and some metadata inside. A local installation of qemu on your desktop/laptop should bring the tools to convert vmdk to raw. Then you could create a VM in the SCALE UI and afterwards dd the raw disk image to the zvol.

I did this and still cant get past the UEFI screen, can someone help me please

 

[mgoulet65]

When this was happening to me it was because I was using the wrong pathname for the ZVOL. Unintuitively, you do not use the name you've given it in Truenas. You have to find the device in /dev and "dd if=MY-OVA-FILE of=" to that instead.

 

[Xenouniv3rse]

When this was happening to me it was because I was using the wrong pathname for the ZVOL. Unintuitively, you do not use the name you've given it in Truenas. You have to find the device in /dev and "dd if=MY-OVA-FILE of=" to that instead.

I am trying to convert a .vmdk file, I place them under /dev/zvol/vm-name. Is that where they should be? Or should it be /dev/Pool/vm-name

 

[Samuel Tai]

/dev/zvol/<pool name>/<path/to/your/VM/zvol/device>