Purpose
This article documents how to convert a Disk from RAW to QCOW2, allowing Veeam Backup for Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager and Red Hat Virtualization to create an incremental backup of the disk.
As documented in the Veeam Backup for Oracle Linux Virtualization Manager and Red Hat Virtualization User Guide, Incremental Backup requires that "the disk is formatted in QCOW2 format."
Solution
Method 1: Convert Disk Format Using REST API
With oVirt version 4.5 and higher, RHV REST API can be used to convert a RAW disk to QCOW2 format.
For more information, review: oVirt REST API documentation - disk - convert POST
Example API request:
curl \
--cacert '/etc/pki/ovirt-engine/ca.pem' \
--user 'admin@internal:mypassword' \
--request POST \
--header 'Version: 4' \
--header 'Content-Type: application/xml' \
--header 'Accept: application/xml' \
--data '
<action>
<disk>
<sparse>true</sparse>
<format>cow</format>
</disk>
</action>
' \
https://<myengine.example.com>/ovirt-engine/api/disks/<disk id>/convert
