One of the most important capabilities of CloudShare is enabling you to import your existing virtual machines (VMs) exactly as they are, so that you can continue working with them to develop new scenarios.

CloudShare provides both an automatic, wizard-based VM import process (using today's recommended VM tools) as well as a manual VM import process.

A successful VM import process results in creation of a CloudShare Snapshot that replicates the VM in every way. You can modify or duplicate this Snapshot as you need to take complete advantage of CloudShare's virtual lab features.

Basic VM Import Workflow

Using the VM Import wizard, the process uses the following steps:

The manual import process follows a similar process, but also provides additional import flexibility, if required.

Details on each of the process steps are provided in the article that describes your chosen import method.