8.7.1 Importing an Amazon virtual machine on a Hyper-V Cloud Server

To import an Amazon EC2 virtual machine on a Hyper-V Cloud Server follow the steps below:

1. Create the Amazon EC2 virtual machine image you want to export
2. Export the image from the Amazon EC2 virtual machine and Upload the image to the FTP area provided by Aruba Cloud Computing
3. Create a Cloud Server with a Hyper-V hypervisor with a custom template

There are two possibilities, depending on whether the Operating System is Windows or Linux.

Windows

To do this on a Windows machine you have to perform the following steps:

1. Create the Amazon EC2 virtual machine image you want to export
   Using the utility Disk2VHD (https://docs.microsoft.com/en-gb/sysinternals/downloads/disk2vhd) you can create images of virtual disks:

   • download the application
   • run the application
     
     
   • select under the header "VHD File name:" the path where to save the .VHD file and in the section "Volumes to include:" the disks for which to create the image
     
     
   • click to "Create"
     
     
   • wait for the creation to be finished and the message "Disk export to VHD completed successfully" to be displayed
     
     


2. Exporting and Uploading the image to the FTP area provided by Aruba Cloud Computing
   • In order to be able to manage the images of virtual disks Aruba Cloud Computing offers a free FTP area for each account and for each data center. This FTP area is only used to archive images of virtual disks to be imported, i.e. images of exported virtual disks: the only accepted file formats for the virtual disk images are .vmdk and .vhd files.
     From the control panel go to the page for the tab "Manage" and select "Tools" > "Import virtual disks" from the menu on the left which will take you to to a page where the connection data for your FTP Account are highlighted, and where the files uploaded in this area are listed (.vmdk and .vhd file types).
     
     
     
     By downloading any FTP client (such as FileZilla, CoreFTP, Cyberduck, etc.) and using the data available to you, you will have access to the area where you can upload images of virtual disks to be imported, or download the exported virtual disks.
     All the files uploaded to the FTP area are controlled by our Cloud system and all the uploaded images will appear as a list.


3. Creating a Cloud Server with a Hyper-V hypervisor with a custom template
   • To create a Cloud Server with a Hyper-V hypervisor with a custom templates please refer to the specific section that deals with it in this guide.

Linux

In the case of exporting a disk image from a Linux machine, there is not a generic tool that guarantees the export in a quick and simple way regardless of the Linux distribution; it is advisable to proceed as follows:

• boot from external disk (CD/DVD)
• export an image from the machine or from a command line (e.g.:dd command) or from tools (e.g.: Clonezilla, Partimage)
• upload the image to the FTP area provided by Aruba
• create a Cloud Server with a custom Template
• upload the image to the main disk
• access the Cloud Server using the Recovery Console to restore the filesystem and reconfigure the machine (operation almost certainly required)