Preface

Cloud Administrators, or End users need to migrate instances from one Porject to another. Or, a Cloud to another cloud. There is multiple ways to achieve this. The easiest way to use snapshot feature and do the migration.

  • Shutdown the Virtual Machine
$ openstack server list
+--------------------------------------+------------+--------+------------------------------+------------+
| ID                                   | Name       | Status | Networks                     | Image Name |
+--------------------------------------+------------+--------+------------------------------+------------+
| c41f3074-c82a-4837-8673-fa7e9fea7e11 | myInstance | ACTIVE | private=10.0.0.3             | cirros     |
+--------------------------------------+------------+--------+------------------------------+------------+

openstack server stop myInstance

$ openstack server list
+--------------------------------------+------------+---------+------------------+------------+
| ID                                   | Name       | Status  | Networks         | Image Name |
+--------------------------------------+------------+---------+------------------+------------+
| c41f3074-c82a-4837-8673-fa7e9fea7e11 | myInstance | SHUTOFF | private=10.0.0.3 | cirros     |
+--------------------------------------+------------+---------+------------------+------------+

Taking snapshot

$ openstack server image create myInstance --name myInstanceSnapshot

$ openstack image list
+--------------------------------------+---------------------------------+--------+
| ID                                   | Name                            | Status |
+--------------------------------------+---------------------------------+--------+
| 657ebb01-6fae-47dc-986a-e49c4dd8c433 | cirros-0.3.5-x86_64-uec         | active |
| 72074c6d-bf52-4a56-a61c-02a17bf3819b | cirros-0.3.5-x86_64-uec-kernel  | active |
| 3c5e5f06-637b-413e-90f6-ca7ed015ec9e | cirros-0.3.5-x86_64-uec-ramdisk | active |
| f30b204e-1ce6-40e7-b8d9-b353d4d84e7d | myInstanceSnapshot              | active |
+--------------------------------------+---------------------------------+--------+

Download the Image

openstack image save --file snapshot.raw f30b204e-1ce6-40e7-b8d9-b353d4d84e7d

The openstack image save command requires the image ID or the image name. Check there is sufficient space on the destination file system for the image file.

Create Image in the Destination Project

openstack image create NEW_IMAGE_NAME --container-format bare --disk-format qcow2 --file IMAGE_URL

Boot the new Instance

openstack server create --flavor m1.tiny --image myInstanceSnapshot myNewInstance