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Uploading local disk images by using the virtctl tool

You can upload a locally stored disk image to a new or existing data volume by using the virtctl command-line utility.

Prerequisites

About data volumes

DataVolume objects are custom resources that are provided by the Containerized Data Importer (CDI) project. Data volumes orchestrate import, clone, and upload operations that are associated with an underlying persistent volume claim (PVC). Data volumes are integrated with OpenShift Virtualization, and they prevent a virtual machine from being started before the PVC has been prepared.

Creating an upload data volume

You can manually create a data volume with an upload data source to use for uploading local disk images.

Procedure

  1. Create a data volume configuration that specifies spec: source: upload{}:

    apiVersion: cdi.kubevirt.io/v1beta1
kind: DataVolume
metadata:
  name: <upload-datavolume> (1)
spec:
  source:
      upload: {}
  pvc:
    accessModes:
      - ReadWriteOnce
    resources:
      requests:
        storage: <2Gi> (2)
    1 The name of the data volume.
    2 The size of the data volume. Ensure that this value is greater than or equal to the size of the disk that you upload.

  2. Create the data volume by running the following command:

    $ oc create -f <upload-datavolume>.yaml

Uploading a local disk image to a data volume

You can use the virtctl CLI utility to upload a local disk image from a client machine to a data volume (DV) in your cluster. You can use a DV that already exists in your cluster or create a new DV during this procedure.

After you upload a local disk image, you can add it to a virtual machine.
Prerequisites

  • You must have one of the following:

    • A raw virtual machine image file in either ISO or IMG format.

    • A virtual machine image file in QCOW2 format.

  • For best results, compress your image file according to the following guidelines before you upload it:

    • Compress a raw image file by using xz or gzip.

      Using a compressed raw image file results in the most efficient upload.

    • Compress a QCOW2 image file by using the method that is recommended for your client:

      • If you use a Linux client, sparsify the QCOW2 file by using the virt-sparsify tool.

      • If you use a Windows client, compress the QCOW2 file by using xz or gzip.

  • The kubevirt-virtctl package must be installed on the client machine.

  • The client machine must be configured to trust the OpenShift Container Platform router’s certificate.

Procedure

  1. Identify the following items:

    • The name of the upload data volume that you want to use. If this data volume does not exist, it is created automatically.

    • The size of the data volume, if you want it to be created during the upload procedure. The size must be greater than or equal to the size of the disk image.

    • The file location of the virtual machine disk image that you want to upload.

  2. Upload the disk image by running the virtctl image-upload command. Specify the parameters that you identified in the previous step. For example:

    $ virtctl image-upload dv <datavolume_name> \ (1)
--size=<datavolume_size> \ (2)
--image-path=</path/to/image> \ (3)
    1 The name of the data volume.
    2 The size of the data volume. For example: --size=500Mi, --size=1G
    3 The file path of the virtual machine disk image.

    • If you do not want to create a new data volume, omit the --size parameter and include the --no-create flag.

    • When uploading a disk image to a PVC, the PVC size must be larger than the size of the uncompressed virtual disk.

    • To allow insecure server connections when using HTTPS, use the --insecure parameter. Be aware that when you use the --insecure flag, the authenticity of the upload endpoint is not verified.

  3. Optional. To verify that a data volume was created, view all data volumes by running the following command:

    $ oc get dvs

CDI supported operations matrix

This matrix shows the supported CDI operations for content types against endpoints, and which of these operations requires scratch space.

Content types HTTP HTTPS HTTP basic auth Registry Upload

KubeVirt (QCOW2)

✓ QCOW2
✓ GZ*
✓ XZ*

✓ QCOW2**
✓ GZ*
✓ XZ*

✓ QCOW2
✓ GZ*
✓ XZ*

✓ QCOW2*
□ GZ
□ XZ

✓ QCOW2*
✓ GZ*
✓ XZ*

KubeVirt (RAW)

✓ RAW
✓ GZ
✓ XZ

✓ RAW
✓ GZ
✓ XZ

✓ RAW
✓ GZ
✓ XZ

✓ RAW*
□ GZ
□ XZ

✓ RAW*
✓ GZ*
✓ XZ*

✓ Supported operation

□ Unsupported operation

* Requires scratch space

** Requires scratch space if a custom certificate authority is required

Additional resources