Hello,
I have a server and I wanted to use the "Bring Your Own Image" system to install a Windows Server 2025 version with everything I need. I’ve tried looking for tutorials or guides on how to create my own image, but I haven’t found anything. I already have another server on OVH running Windows, and I wanted to be able to export all my content without compatibility issues.
However, there is no guide anywhere on how to create a .raw image. In OVH’s documentation, the only information about the system is a very basic explanation of how to “import” an image, but that doesn’t help if I don’t have anything to import.
If someone could guide me a little, I would be immensely grateful!
29372 
03.04.2025 15:26
Hello,
I think I've heard of people installing Windows Server inside VirtualBox and exporting the disk (as qcow2 or raw, not sure which one).
Did you look at https://github.com/ovh/bringyourownlinux? If you missed it, should we make the link more visible in the doc? https://github.com/ovh/docs/blob/b2eb95a79e2b7993ce1dd3c819a6170e7bd43fe8/pages/bare_metal_cloud/dedicated_servers/bring-your-own-linux/guide.en-gb.md#L208
I see some tutorials for import the virtualbox like you say but nothing seen to work, i will do some research in that github you give me and try, is really frustrating, in 4-5 days i dont get anything to work hahaha
OVH US actually wrote a dedicated documentation page for this: https://support.us.ovhcloud.com/hc/en-us/articles/30044312805267-Configure-Your-Windows-Server-for-the-BYOI-API-in-QCOW2
If you follow it and it works, we may consider adding it to the non-US documentation pages.
Maybe the Bring Your Own Linux repo I linked earlier may not be the best reference as it contains Linux-specific things like the make_image_bootable.sh script, called only when you use the BYOLinux OS, not the BYOImage one.
https://www.phillipsj.net/posts/building-a-windows-server-qcow2-image/ looks like it could be helpful too.
https://docs.openstack.org/image-guide/create-images-manually-example-windows-image.html may be relevant too.
Please take my advice with a grain of salt, I have just skimmed through the guides and not actually followed them.