In an embodiment, an approach is provided that retrieves a source image metadata from a persistent storage media, where the source image metadata corresponds to a source image associated with a source platform, compares the retrieved source image metadata to image metadata corresponding to available virtual images associated with a target platform, identifies, based on the comparison, one of the available image metadata that is most compatible to the source image metadata, and uses the available virtual image corresponding to the identified available image metadata as a target virtual image compatible with the target platform.