Creating vmdk image

Hi,
Official Fedora 29 is released in .iso format. Do we get in vmdk format anywhere>
If not,
I want to create a vmdk image out of official fedora 29 image.
Can you please guide me in doing the same.

Hi, @sudalaim, isn’t booting the iso file (all virtual machines I know of are capable of doing so) good for you?

You can boot from iso in a VM, install Fedora in a newly created VM as you would on a normal PC – and the resulting image will be in the VM’s native format (or the format you specify). That’s what I do when I need a Fedora VM.

As a note: Fedora 30 is out now, you should use it, not 29 – unless you have a specific need for F29 and not F30.

You can also look at Fedora Cloud images, there are images provided for VirtualBox and KVM/qemu, maybe there’s an easy way to convert one of these to vmdk. keep in mind that cloud images are a bit different from the Server or Workstation ones, do they suit your needs?

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Thanks @nightromantic for the reply.
Currently i have tried installing fedora in virtual machine and took snapshot of the VM to get vmdk image. Somehow i felt taking snapshot didn’t look good for me. That’s why i thought of asking a better professional way. Or is this the way generally any company does?
I don’t want Cloud image. I’m just looking for Server edition.

Regards,
Vivek S

It includes the server role, you will virtually see no difference, all Fedora editions use the same repositories.

If you are concerned about naming or want to experience the server edition:

dnf --allowerasing install fedora-release-server
dnf --allowerasing group install "Fedora Server Edition"
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To tell the truth I don’t know about professional way and how companies do it ) And I would be interested to hear from people in the know.

The way I described is the way I do it. Also I’ve never used VMWare, I’ve used VirtualBox and KVM/qemu.

The key question, I think, is what for do you want to use this vmdk image?

VMDK and copying/moving VMs to other hosts.

As far as I understand it, vmdk itself is a hard drive image, it’s like a virtual hard drive.

If you want to copy your virtual machine to other hosts, you need more that vmdk itself, you need all the properties of your VM (how many processor cores it uses, how much ram, what kind of hardware is emulated, which network controller with which network settings is used, etc.) – and as far as I know it’s not contained in the vmdk.

For running and managing many VM’s (maybe from all from one base image) – there are professional tools indeed, but I’ve never used them.

If you need a VM on this one host – then the way you did it is a good one. And snapshot will allow you to roll back to know state later – let’s say after some experimenting with your VM. And for making one or two copies or moving it to different physical host there are built-in tools in VM managers – usually called cloning and migrating.

About directly converting ISO to VMDK

And back to your initial question. What can you get by converting ISO file to vmdk file? ISO is a cd/dvd image, vmdk is a hard drive image. So you’ll get a virtual hard drive containing Fedora installer. Not a running useful Fedora Server system (virtual system) – an installation media. You launch it – and it asks you where do you want to install it. ) Exactly as booting your VM from the ISO does.

So – as far as I understand it – there’s no useful purpose in directly converting from ISO to vmdk. To get a useful VM you still need to perform an installation. That’s the thought behind my initial reply ))

Cloud images vs. ISO installer

Cloud images, on the other side, are intended to be run directly, without usual full installation process. But I’ve never played with them, so can’t advise on their usage. Though as far as I understand, you can take a cloud image, the add to it all the packages you need – and end with basically the same Fedora Server as a result. But for just one VM I find doing a usual install from an installation ISO is more straightforward.

One more note, as far as I understand it, cloud images are optimized in some way to running in a VM. I.e. maybe they don’t contain a traditional bootloader and hardware support needed to run on a multitude of physical hardware.

On the other hand, installing from an ISO you’ll get experience more similar to the real physical server – if you’ll ever need to work with physical server. Again, which way to take depends on what do you want/need to achieve ))))


P.S. Sorry for a long post :wink:

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Check also this in case: Fedora Virtual Machine