Creating and Managing Virtual Machines - Getting Started with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization - page 93

Exporting a virtual machine and template
To export a virtual machine, you must have an active export storage domain in your data
center. If you remember, we configured and activated an export domain in Chapter 3 , Set-
ting Up the RHEV Virtual Infrastructure . We are going to use this domain to export a virtu-
al machine and templates.
To export a virtual machine, use the following steps:
1. Select the virtual machine to export and shut down the virtual machine.
2. Right-click on the virtual machine, and click on Export . In the Export Virtual
Machine window, you will find the following two options:
◦ Force Override : This will override existing images of the virtual machine
on the export domain.
◦ Collapse Snapshots : This creates a single export volume per disk. It also
removes the dependency of the template that is available on the data center
where we are going to import the virtual machine later. It's applicable only
if the exported virtual machine is created from the virtual machine tem-
plate.
3. The procedure to export the virtual machine template is identical to the previous
process. To export a template, navigate to the Templates tab, select the template,
and right-click on it to select the Export option.
Note
The virtual machine or template exportation is a time-consuming operation; check the
Events and Tasks tab to track the status. Upon successful completion of the exportation,
navigate to the Storage tab, select Export Domain , and click on the VM Import tab or the
Template Import tab. You will see the exported virtual machine or template listed there.
Importing a virtual machine and template
In the previous section, we learned how to export a virtual machine and template. Once the
virtual machine or template is exported, you can import these back to a new data center in
the same RHEV environment or a new environment. The steps to import the virtual ma-
chine or template in both the scenarios are the same. However, we need to attach the export
domain to a new data center.