How To Convert an OVA to an AMI

Overview

This article discusses how to convert CloudBolt OVA to an AMI

Considerations

• Java 1.7

  • yum install java-1.7.0-openjdk

• AWS and EC2 CLI Tools

  • http://docs.aws.amazon.com/AWSEC2/latest/CommandLineReference/set-up-ec2-cli-linux.html

  • http://aws.amazon.com/cli/

• Access to an AWS account

• Environment variables

  • JAVA_HOME

    • /usr/lib/jvm/jre-1.7.0-openjdk.x86_64 on CentOS

  • AWS_ACCESS_KEY

  • AWS_SECRET_KEY

  • EC2_HOME

    • Where you’ve uncompressed the EC2 CLI archive.

  • Add /usr/local/ec2/bin to your PATH

Procedure

1. Name the ova something like <original ova>.ova.tgz

2. Untar the OVA

   • tar xvf <original ova>.ova.tgz

3. Create an S3 bucket to use for image storage during conversion

   • This name of this bucket is passed to the ec2-import-image on the -b switch.

4. Use ec2-import-image

   • ec2-import-instance cloudbolt-5.0.0.4-disk1.vmdk \
     -f VMDK \
     -t t2.medium \
     -p Linux \
     -a x86_64 \
     -b demo-amis \
     -o $AWS_ACCESS_KEY \
     -w $AWS_SECRET_KEY

5. Watch conversion status with:

   • ec2-describe-conversion-tasks

6. It takes a while, but eventually an instance shows up configured with the contents of the VMDK.

   • Note: it takes a while even after the conversion process has completed.