This document discusses importing and exporting unmanaged KVM instances in CloudStack. It begins with an introduction to unmanaged instances and the APIs added to support importing and exporting KVM instances. It provides an overview of the import and export flows and requirements. It also demonstrates importing and exporting unmanaged KVM instances through the CloudStack UI and CLI. Finally, it discusses future enhancements such as supporting additional hypervisors and batch operations.

1. Import-Export
KVM Instances
Ayush Pandey
Google Summer of Code 2023

2. About Me - Ayush Pandey
● Masters in Data Science at
University of Colorado, Boulder,
US.
● Google Summer of Code
Contributor (2023) - Apache
Software Foundation
● 4 years of experience working as
a fullstack developer for different
MNC’s.
● Hobbies : Avid football and
basketball fan.

3. Agenda
● Introduction
○ Ingestion, unmanaged Instance
● Flow Diagram
● Importing Instance
○ Prerequisites
○ List API - listUnmanagedInstances
○ Import API - importUnmanagedInstances
● Exporting/ Unmanaging Instances
○ Export API - unmanageVirtualMachine
● Demo (Walkthrough of Ingestion through UI)
● Future Scope

4. Introduction
• Unmanaged Instances: VMs present at hypervisor end, but
doesn’t exist in Cloudstack database and can’t be managed -
hence the name Unmanaged Instance.
• Once an unmanaged Instance is imported to Cloudstack it’s
details are persisted in cloudstack database and it is
orchestrated by cloudstack hence the name Managed Instance.
• VM Ingestion for VMWare was implemented in cloudstack and
we extended this feature to KVM .
• Why KVM: light weight, open source, cheaper than vmware and
very popular among users.
• APIs Supported: Extended listUnmanagedInstance,
importUnmanagedInstance, unmanagedVirtualMachine

5. Flow Diagram

6. Pre-requisites
● For listing unmanaged instances,KVM host should exist in
Cloudstack.
● For importing, following must be already added or created at
Cloudstack end:
○ Disk Offering (Root Disk is mandatory and Data Disk is optional)
○ Service Offering (CPU cores, CPU speed , Ram)
○ Network Offering (For isolated network ipaddress is also needed)
○ Template (Operating System)
● Documentation :
https://docs.cloudstack.apache.org/en/latest/installguide/hypervis
or/kvm.html

7. List API - listunmanagedInstances
● List all unmanaged Instances for a given cluster
● Added in 4.14
● KVM host must already be added as a cloudstack cluster
● Required request Parameters: clusterid
● Returns the following responses:
○ hostid
○ cpucorespersocket
○ name
○ Osdisplayname
○ Memory
○ powerstate
○ Cpuspeed
○ Disk
○ Nic
○ cpunumber

8. Import Unmange VM using CLI
List unmanaged VM’s using CLI

9. UI screen to list all unmanaged VM’s

10. Import API: importUnmanagedInstance
● Imports an unmanaged Instance into cloudstack.
● Added in 4.14
● Storage, network, template must be added or created in Cloudstack prior to import
● Provides parameters to assign account, service offering, template, map individual disks and networks.
○ hostid
○ domainid
○ name (domain name)
○ displayname
○ migrateallowed
○ projectid
○ datadiskofferinglist
○ force
● Returns the similar output as listUnmanageInstances API
○ serviceofferingid
○ hostname
○ nicnetworklist
○ details
○ domainid
○ templateid
○ nicipaddresslist

11. Import Unmange VM using CLI

12. Import VM Dialog Box

13. ExportVM API - unmanagedVirtualMachine
● unmanaged/Export Virtual Machine
● VM will still persist in the KVM hypervisor but all its records will be
removed from cloudstack database.
● Added in v4.15
● Required Request Parameter: id (The id of VM to be unmanage)
● Returns the following responses:
○ details
○ success

14. UI screen to exporting managed VM

15. Import-Export Demo for UI

16. Future Scope
● Import-Export Instances functionality can be extended to other
hypervisors such as Xenserver, hyper-V etc.
● Batch import of unmanage VM’s for a single account, project etc.

17. Thank You
Q & A
Reach me at :
Linkedin : https://www.linkedin.com/in/itsayushpandey/
Email : pandey.ayu@gmail.com