I have a mini-pc with Ubuntu 14.04 installed. I would like to virtualize the HDD using xenConverter. I Wonder if the idea of virtualizing and use the produced image on another computer is good : indeed the material is not the same, maybe there will be drivers missing errors?...
I have another question : xenConverter produces images in the format OVF, is it readeable by virtualbox?
thanks
Normally, when you virtualize an OS, the resulting system has virtual drivers that stand in for the normal drivers. For example, if your physical system has an Intel SATA chipset, the VM will end up with something like an LSI Logic "virtual chipset".
This driver is not compatible with non-VMs, for obvious reasons. So if your goal is to use a VM image on physical hardware.. you're probably going about it the wrong way. Most OSes out there have a way to prepare a system for deployment by stripping out all device-specific information. Windows has sysprep, Ubuntu has MAAS. Just dropping the VM image onto hardware without these preparations is going to be a headache.
Now, if you mean moving the VM to different hypervisors, then yes, this is fine, and you can usually get away with it since each hypervisor (application like VMWare, VirtualBox, etc) has its own set of "helper" tools (VMWare Tools, VirtualBox Guest Additions, etc. Before moving the VM, uninstall the helper tools.
Depending on the particularities of how your VM is set up, you may have to use different drivers. It really, really depends on your setup. The best way to find out is to clone your VM and just try it!
In regards to your second question, yes, VirtualBox can read OVF images.
