Converting a Parallels Virtuozzo container into a Parallels Bare Metal Server VM

Virtuozzo and Bare Metal Server are two commercial virtualization products from Parallels. They use different approaches to storing VM data.

Parallels Virtuozzo has no concept of a full-fledged OS for a container. A container is basically a chroot you can see as a folder on disk, and the OS is the hypervisor’s OS. Each container can still have its own set of installed programs though. I’ll cover moving a Linux Virtuozzo container.

Luckily Parallels built utilities to import containers into other products.

So first, install Parallels Transporter For Containers on the Virtuozzo server:

Download and unpack:

wget /wp-content/uploads/2014/08/parallels-transporter-for-containers-parallels-en_US-13253.694417.run.zip  
unzip parallels-transporter-for-containers-parallels-en_US-13253.694417.run.zip

Set the flags and run it:

chmod +x parallels-transporter-for-containers-parallels-en_US-13253.694417.run  
./parallels-transporter-for-containers-parallels-en_US-13253.694417.run

Get the list of running containers:

vzlist -a

Find the container you need in the list. You want its CTID (first column).

Then connect to the PBMS server and import the container using the utility:

pmigrate c root:%password%@%virtuozzo_IP%/%CTID% v %NEW_VM_NAME%

The transfer starts. Once the messages stop, the new VM shows up in the BareMetal management console: