Export a VM to an External USB Drive

How to Export a Virtual Machine to an External USB Drive

Summary

This article describes how to export a XenServer Virtual Machine (VM) to a USB storage device. You must use the Command Line Interface (CLI), instead of the XenCenter.

Procedure

1. Use the fdisk -l command to determine what device file to use for the USB mass storage device. In the following screen shot, the device file is “/dev/sdb1”.

2. Create a subdirectory called “usb”, using the following command.\:
mkdir /mnt/usb

3. Mount the device file from step 1 by using the following command:
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt/usb

Note: You might have to format the mass storage device before you mount it. If so, use the following command:

mkfs –t ext3 /dev/sdb1

4. Export a VM using the XAPI with the following command:
xe vm-export vm=<Name of VM> filename=<Name of file ending in “.xva”>

Note: Although the filename extension is not needed in Linux, it is helpful to identify the file on a Windows based file system, or if later importing the file from a Windows file system using the XenCenter.

5. To see the file and its size, use the following command:
ls –l

6. Unmount the USB drive using the following command:
umount /mnt/usb