Proxmox Import QCOW2 Image

Intro

I recently migrated my homelab servers from running bare metal KVM/QEMU on Ubuntu, to running Proxmox as a hypervisor. As part of that process I migrated some of the VM's from KVM to Proxmox. In this post I will show you how I imported the qcow2 VM's from KVM/QEMU into Proxmox.

The following software was used in this post.

• Proxmox - 7.0-11
• Ubuntu - 18.04

KVM/QEMU Host

Start by finding the ID of the VM you want to migrate.

virsh list --all

# Output
 Id    Name                           State
----------------------------------------------------
 2     uctl01                         running

Shutdown the target VM.

virsh shutdown 2

# Output
 Id    Name                           State
----------------------------------------------------
       uctl01                         shut off

Copy the qcow2 image to the Proxmox host. I used SCP in the below example.

scp /opt/libvirt/vm/uctl01.qcow2 root@<target-ip>:/tmp/uctl01.qcow2

That's everything that is required on the KVM/QEMU host.

Proxmox Host

On the Proxmox host, create a new VM that will be used to attach the qcow2 disk that was copied over. Ensure that you use a unique VM ID: 101 in the below example.

qm create 101 \
  --name uctl01 --numa 0 --ostype l26 \
  --cpu cputype=host --cores 2 --sockets 1 \
  --memory 4096  \
  --scsihw virtio-scsi-pci \
  --net0 bridge=vmbr0,virtio=BE:66:BD:74:E8:C9,firewall=1 \
  --serial0 socket

Confirm the VM was created successfully.

qm list 

# Output
VMID NAME                 STATUS     MEM(MB)    BOOTDISK(GB) PID
 101 uctl01               stopped    4096               0.00 0

Import the qcow2 disk to the required datastore. local-lvm in my case.

qm importdisk 101 /tmp/uctl01.qcow2 local-lvm

# Output
Successfully imported disk as 'unused0:local-lvm:vm-101-disk-0

Attach the disk to the VM created in the previous step.

qm set 101 --scsi0 local-lvm:vm-101-disk-0

# Output
update VM 101: -scsi0 local-lvm:vm-101-disk-0

Make the disk bootable, otherwise the VM will not boot.

qm set 101 --boot c --bootdisk scsi0

# Output
update VM 101: -boot c -bootdisk scsi0

Thats all the steps required to import the VM into the Proxmox host. But we are not finished yet, the VM had no network connectivity 😭.

Virtual Machine

When I built the VM on the KVM host, the network interface was named ens3 . When I imported it into Proxmox, the interface named changed to ens18 . The interface name needs to be updated in netplan .

Logon to the console of the VM to update the network interface numbering.

qm terminal 101

# Output
starting serial terminal on interface serial0 (press Ctrl+O to exit)

# Login with username/password

Confirm the network interface numbering.

ip addr

# Output
2: ens18:  mtu 1500 qdisc fq_codel state UP group default qlen 1000
...

Update the /etc/netplan/01-netcfg.yaml config file.

# /etc/netplan/01-netcfg.yaml
network:
  version: 2
  ethernets:
    # ens3: <- Change to current interface name
    ens18:
      dhcp4: no
      dhcp6: no
      addresses: [<ip-address>/<prefix-length>]
      gateway4: <gateway-ip-address>
      nameservers:
        addresses: [<nameserver-ip-address>]

Apply the netplan config.

sudo netplan apply

And that's it, the VM should now have network connectivity.

Outro

In this post, I showed you how to import a QCOW2 VM from a KVM/QEMU host to a Proxmox host and update the network settings on the VM to fix network connectivity.