Leaving Nutanix for KubeVirt

A Nutanix VM can be exported through the Prism v4 API with Transiva, converted with h2kvm, and landed on KubeVirt, where Zorvia manages it like any other VM.

What was run. The steps below ran on a single-node k3s cluster with KubeVirt v1.9.1 and Zorvia 0.5.0, against Chimera's Nutanix simulator, not a real Nutanix cluster. The guest was a stock Ubuntu 24.04 cloud image. See the case study for the full list of limits.

The path

Nutanix (Prism v4)  ->  hyperexport  ->  h2kvm  ->  KubeVirt  ->  Zorvia

Export. hyperexport --provider nutanix -vm <name> -resolve-containers -mounts <container>:<nfs-path> writes a qcow2 and artifact-manifest.json. The source VM is not changed.
Convert. h2kvmctl --cmd local --vmdk <disk> --output-dir <dir> --out-format qcow2 --flatten --fstab-mode stabilize-all --regen-initramfs --checksum produces the disk to boot.
Land. Wrap the qcow2 in a containerDisk and create a VirtualMachine:

FROM scratch
ADD --chown=107:107 disk.qcow2 /disk/

apiVersion: kubevirt.io/v1
kind: VirtualMachine
metadata: {name: migrated-vm, labels: {migrated-from: nutanix}}
spec:
  runStrategy: Always
  template:
    spec:
      domain:
        cpu: {cores: 1}
        resources: {requests: {memory: 512Mi}}
        devices:
          disks: [{name: root, disk: {bus: virtio}}]
          interfaces: [{name: default, masquerade: {}}]
      networks: [{name: default, pod: {}}]
      volumes:
      - name: root
        containerDisk: {image: localhost/migrated-vm:v1, imagePullPolicy: Never}

Manage. Zorvia lists the VM under /api/v1/vms as Running, and the usual lifecycle, console and snapshot features apply.

Measured

One unattended run (scripts/e2e-nutanix-exit.sh in Transiva, Ubuntu 24.04 cloud image): 7 of 7 stages passed in 747 s. On KubeVirt the guest was Ready and answering ping 335 s after the disk was converted, including the containerDisk build and import. The same run booted the converted disk on libvirt/KVM (UEFI) in 79 s.

Not covered

A real Nutanix cluster, and Windows, UEFI, multi-disk or large VMs.
Boot repair on a guest that needs it: the Ubuntu image needed only h2kvm's DHCP network fallback.
Zorvia listing the VM was checked by hand; the script does not check it yet.
Checks inside the guest beyond ping.

The path​

Measured​

Not covered​

The path

Measured

Not covered