How to Transfer VM’s and Volumes between OpenStack Projects?

You can move your instances and volumes between the projects. However, OpenStack does not support moving IP addresses together with Instances, so you will need to allocate and associate new Floating IPs.

If your instance had any volumes attached as additional storage they will need to be moved separately. If there is more than one volume it is good to write down all device names (like: /dev/sdb, /dev/sdc) together with their names or Volume ID’s (in case names are identical). It will be needed later to re-attach them correctly - match the names or Volume ID’s with device names.

Transferring a Volume to a New Project

  • Detach the Volume from any running instance before moving it to another domain or project.

  • After detaching the “Create Transfer” option is available.

  • You can name your transfer with any name, this is not important. But the next topics - Transfer ID and Authorization Key - care very important: copy it to some text file.

  • Your Volume stays in the status “Awaiting Transfer” until it is finished.

  • Go to your destination project and/or domain. Then click on “Accept transfer” in the Volumes menu.

  • Paste your Transfer ID and Authorization Key.

  • Your Volume will now appear in a new project.

Transferring a Virtual Machine to a new project

  • Create a snapshot of your VM by clicking the “Create Snapshot” button in “Instances” menu in Horizon.

  • Convert Snapshot into a Volume. Only that way you can move it to a new project and/or domain.

  • After converting Snapshot into a Volume the “Create Transfer” option is available and you can proceed exactly the same way as with Volume transfer.

  • After the process is completed, launch the instance from that transferred Volume.

  • You will need to attach a new Floating IP.

Note

Running your new VM that had a storage volume attached may result in an error and it will boot in Rescue Mode. This is normal and unavoidable because to re-attach your storage volumes you need to run th VM first. To fix that error, just attach your newly transferred storage volume that was attached to the instance before transferring it to the new project/domain. If there is more than one the device, matching names (or Volume ID’s if the names were identical) with device names is important - that’s why writing them down was needed. After attaching all Volumes just reboot your Instance, it will boot normally next time.