How can i use virtual image recreate original system
 

One of our systems had a harddrive that crashed. The admin (no longer works here) was supposed to have clonezilla backups of each of the systems in that project. We can't find them. There is a virtual image of the system we used in QEMU/KVM (qcow format). Is it possible to use that image to recreate the original system?

The os of the target system is Redhat, we are doing most of our work on Centos 6.? systems. Using Virtual Machine Manager 0.9.0 powered by libvirt.

rick.

Maybe.

For the most part a VM is a real computer. So one could use any method one would use to clone a normal system to system method.

The same pitfalls apply to any clone such as loader referenced by name or uuid or such and other mount by uuid or such or even lvm configuration or raid.


One could try to add in a virtual blank hard drive and boot the VM to clonezilla and use it to make files to the blank hard drive. Then use the files on usb drive maybe or other way to restore.

Clonezilla and redobackup and even dd might be used over networks if you wish so it could move data that way. Really consider the VM to be a true image of the computer and work that way.


Side note. I have used dd or other tools to make a single file image. That single file is a bit for bit copy of the original system and could be used to boot to a vm as a raw virtual device image. As such it can be used to restore. It may be possible to convert the qcow to raw and dd it back to the source.