# Import large existing VM images
**URL:** https://forum.opennebula.io/t/import-large-existing-vm-images/1044
**Category:** Product Support
**Created:** [July 29, 2015, 1:04am UTC](https://forum.opennebula.io/t/import-large-existing-vm-images/1044 "2015-07-29T01:04:01Z")
**Posts on this page:** 2
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Coryh](https://forum.opennebula.io/u/Coryh)
#### Post date: [July 29, 2015, 1:04am UTC](https://forum.opennebula.io/t/import-large-existing-vm-images/1044/1 "2015-07-29T01:04:01Z")
If I have a bunch of KVM images in QCOW2 format that i want to bring into OpenNebula how might i got about doing that?
I have setup a datastore to point to the NFS share where everything currently lives, this NFS share is mounted on each of my KVM hosts(called /nfs)
I’d like to just associate the exiting images with OpenNebula then create some VM’s based on them. They will all be persistent images as most of them are Windows Server’s
When I add a new image using Sunstone OpenNebula seems to insist on copying the image(VERY slowly) from the existing location (/nfs/VMs/VMDisk1.qcow2) to it’s own directory at /nfs/107/0ad4b4a5a7ee73295a7ceb1e205f1536
Can I tell OpenNebula NOT to copy these images(Which total \>2TB in total) and just use them in place?
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### Author:  [@cmartin](https://forum.opennebula.io/u/cmartin)
#### Post date: [July 30, 2015, 8:34am UTC](https://forum.opennebula.io/t/import-large-existing-vm-images/1044/2 "2015-07-30T08:34:11Z")
Hi,
You can tell OpenNebula to use the existing images with the [SOURCE attribute](http://docs.opennebula.org/4.12/user/references/img_template.html). This is not supported from the sunstone wizard, you need to use a template file or the [–source option](http://docs.opennebula.org/4.12/user/virtual_resource_management/img_guide.html#create-images) from the CLI.
When using SOURCE, you also need to provide the SIZE manually. OpenNebula will not try to detect the file size.