+Importing Virtual Machines and disk images
+------------------------------------------
+
+A VM export from a foreign hypervisor takes usually the form of one or more disk
+ images, with a configuration file describing the settings of the VM (RAM,
+ number of cores). +
+The disk images can be in the vmdk format, if the disks come from
+VMware or VirtualBox, or qcow2 if the disks come from a KVM hypervisor.
+The most popular configuration format for VM exports is the OVF standard, but in
+practice interoperation is limited because many settings are not implemented in
+the standard itself, and hypervisors export the supplementary information
+in non-standard extensions.
+
+Besides the problem of format, importing disk images from other hypervisors
+may fail if the emulated hardware changes too much from one hypervisor to
+another. Windows VMs are particularly concerned by this, as the OS is very
+picky about any changes of hardware. This problem may be solved by
+installing the MergeIDE.zip utility available from the Internet before exporting
+and choosing a hard disk type of *IDE* before booting the imported Windows VM.
+
+Finally there is the question of paravirtualized drivers, which improve the
+speed of the emulated system and are specific to the hypervisor.
+GNU/Linux and other free Unix OSes have all the necessary drivers installed by
+default and you can switch to the paravirtualized drivers right after importing
+the VM. For Windows VMs, you need to install the Windows paravirtualized
+drivers by yourself.
+
+GNU/Linux and other free Unix can usually be imported without hassle. Note
+that we cannot guarantee a successful import/export of Windows VMs in all
+cases due to the problems above.
+
+Step-by-step example of a Windows OVF import
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+Microsoft provides
+https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virtual-machines/[Virtual Machines downloads]
+ to get started with Windows development.We are going to use one of these
+to demonstrate the OVF import feature.
+
+Download the Virtual Machine zip
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+After getting informed about the user agreement, choose the _Windows 10
+Enterprise (Evaluation - Build)_ for the VMware platform, and download the zip.
+
+Extract the disk image from the zip
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+Using the `unzip` utility or any archiver of your choice, unpack the zip,
+and copy via ssh/scp the ovf and vmdk files to your {pve} host.
+
+Import the Virtual Machine
+^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
+
+This will create a new virtual machine, using cores, memory and
+VM name as read from the OVF manifest, and import the disks to the +local-lvm+
+ storage. You have to configure the network manually.
+
+ qm importovf 999 WinDev1709Eval.ovf local-lvm
+
+The VM is ready to be started.
+
+Adding an external disk image to a Virtual Machine
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+You can also add an existing disk image to a VM, either coming from a
+foreign hypervisor, or one that you created yourself.
+
+Suppose you created a Debian/Ubuntu disk image with the 'vmdebootstrap' tool:
+
+ vmdebootstrap --verbose \
+ --size 10GiB --serial-console \
+ --grub --no-extlinux \
+ --package openssh-server \
+ --package avahi-daemon \
+ --package qemu-guest-agent \
+ --hostname vm600 --enable-dhcp \
+ --customize=./copy_pub_ssh.sh \
+ --sparse --image vm600.raw
+
+You can now create a new target VM for this image.
+
+ qm create 600 --net0 virtio,bridge=vmbr0 --name vm600 --serial0 socket \
+ --bootdisk scsi0 --scsihw virtio-scsi-pci --ostype l26
+
+Add the disk image as +unused0+ to the VM, using the storage +pvedir+:
+
+ qm importdisk 600 vm600.raw pvedir
+
+Finally attach the unused disk to the SCSI controller of the VM:
+
+ qm set 600 --scsi0 pvedir:600/vm-600-disk-1.raw
+
+The VM is ready to be started.
+
+
+ifndef::wiki[]
+include::qm-cloud-init.adoc[]
+endif::wiki[]
+
+