Supported Image Types and File Formats

When you add an image to the PMO image catalog, you can specify its disk and container format. This article describes the various supported disk and file formats and what subset is supported by PMO.

You can find more info on supported disk and container formats in the OpenStack documentation here: http://docs.openstack.org/image-guide/content/image-formats.html

Format TypeDescriptionSupported by Platform9Our Comments
raw/imgAn unstructured disk image format; if you have a file without an extension it is possibly a raw format.Yes (given .raw, .img, .dat, .bin extensions)Common extensions .raw, .img, .dat, .bin
qcow2Supported by the QEMU emulator that can expand dynamically and supports Copy-on-WriteYesMost common file format used with Linux/KVM
vmdkCommon disk format supported by many common virtual machine monitorsYes (for VMware vSphere hypervisor)VMDK format is commonly associated with VMware
vdiSupported by VirtualBox virtual machine monitor and the QEMU emulatorNot recommended (Will be recognized, but may or may not work depending on driver availability)VirtualBox image files in practice may or may not work with Linux/KVM hypervisor. You might run into compatibility issues due to missing required virtualization drivers)
isoAn archive format for the data contents of an optical disc, such as CD-ROMYes-
akiAn Amazon kernel imageNoAmazon image types are not popularly used with Linux/KVM
ariAn Amazon ramdisk imageNoAmazon image types are not popularly used with Linux/KVM
amiAn Amazon machine imageNoAmazon image types are not popularly used with Linux/KVM
vhdThe VHD disk format, a common disk format used by virtual machine monitors from VMware, Xen, Microsoft, VirtualBox, and othersNoNot a popular image format
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