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Guides

Unraid OS Guides

📄️ Using a physical disk in a VM

The steps for creating a VM using a physical disk (including one with an OS already installed) are similar to that of using a virtual disk. However, there are two use cases for which one would be using a physical disk: creating a VM with a physical disk with no OS installed (new install) and one that already has an OS installed (conversion). We will only cover converting from a previous installation as the other should be straightforward enough. You can use a physical disk with any OS but this conversion guide only covers Windows.

📄️ Xen to KVM migration

Virtual machines that were running in Xen will require different procedures to convert to KVM, depending on whether they were created as paravirtualized or hardware-virtualized guests. Regardless of your conversion scenario, it is highly recommended that you create a copy of your existing Xen virtual disk before proceeding. Use the copy to test your conversion process and, if successful, you can remove your own Xen-based virtual disk should you so desire. In addition, you should ensure your hardware has support for hardware-assisted virtualization (Intel VT-x / AMD-V) as this is a requirement for use with KVM. Xen PV guests do not leverage hardware-virtualization extensions, which makes their process for converting slightly more involved than Xen HVM guests to KVM (it is not documented at the time of this writing).