Preface: I have certainly not exhaustively tested this process. I had a specific need and found a specific solution that worked. Situation: I was issued a shiny new laptop running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7 (with Corp VPN, certs, Authentication configuration, etc...) The image was great, but I needed more flexibility on my bare metal. So, my goal was to P2V the corporate image so I could just run it as a VM. * Remove corporate drive and install new SSD * install corp drive in external USB-3 case * Install RHEL 7 on new SSD * dd old drive to a disk-image file in a temp location which will be an image which is the same size as your actual drive (unless you have enough space in your destination to contain a temp and converted image) * convert the raw disk-image to a qcow file while pushing it to the final location - this step should reduce the disk size - however, I believe it will only reduce/collapse zero-byte blocks (not just free space - i.e. if you de...
Linux: The whole world made it for you... This blog is a collection of things I come across either at home or at work as a Linux Administrator. I have worked as an Admin working with Solaris, SAN, Backups and Linux at the Enterprise level for over 16 years.