Oracle VM: Import VMs from Citrix

Today I was at a client's office and I was asked to convert some Guest VMs from Citrix to Oracle VM Infrastructure.

When importing in Oracle VM Manager the OVF (.ovf and .vhd) file exported using XenCenter it returned this error:

Assembly import error: encoding specified in XML declaration is incorrect

I manually imported VHD files to Oracle VM Manager then created a new VM using VHD as virtual disk but with no success. The guest VM was stucked at boot.

The same procedure above successfully completed using Oracle VM VirtualBox installed on my laptop...so here's the procedure I used to import VMs from Citrix to Oracle VM.

Basically this is a four step procedure:

1)Export OVF and VHD from Citrix XenCenter

2)Create a new VM in Oracle VM VirtualBox using as virtual disk the VHD disk exported above.

3)Export OVA from Oracle VM VirtualBox

4)Import OVA as an Assembly in Oracle VM Manager


Detailed procedure:

Export Citrix .ovf  and .vhd from  XenCenter

Open Oracle VM Virtualbox and deploy a new guest VM. As virtual hard disk select previously exported .vhd file(s).

Play virtual machine in Oracle VM Virtualbox and verify that it's booting correctly

Select File -> Export Appliance

Select vm to export NOT CHECK "Write old ovf 0.9" NOT CHECK "Write Manifest"


Export file.

The export result is an .ova file which contains the Citrix VM furtherly converted by Oracle VM VirtualBox.

Log-on to Oracle VM Manager then import new Assembly and select .ova file

When Assembly is imported click "Create VM Template".

Once Template is created guest VM can be deployed. Select "New VM" -> "Create from Template"

That's all!!