Quick notes: Microsoft Windows VM, virtualbox -> qcow
I'm going to need a VM running Windows. It is trivial, but taking a
few notes might avoid the need of looking this up again in future
(if I ever need it again, hopefully not).
First off, the VMs are nowadays available for free download[1].
- 18 gigabytes of download! -
They have an expiration date.
Once upon a time it was suggested to take a snapshot of them.
Nowadays the site reports a specific expiry date. I'm not sure the
snapshot trick will be effective, but I guess I'll find out later.
I need to convert it to qcow2.
I took the VirtualBox format because the conversion seems to be trivial.
It boils down to unzip the binary, extract it from '.ova' format (which
is just a tarball), and then use qcow-image(1) (with 'convert' command):
$ qemu-img convert -f vmdk -O qcow2 file.vmdk file.qcow2
[1]
https://developer.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/downloads/virtual-machines/