7.7. Creating a Virtual Machine

Before you create a new virtual machine, make sure that the following resources are available:

To create a virtual machine:

  1. Select the Home view and select Create Virtual Machine from the Actions menu.

  2. The Create Virtual Machine step is displayed in the wizard.

    This figure shows the Create Virtual Machines step in the Create Virtual Machine wizard.

    Enter or select the following:

    • Server Pool: The server pool on which to create the virtual machine.

    • Repository: Select the repository in which to create the virtual machine configuration file.

    • Name: A name for the virtual machine.

      A virtual machine name must consist of alphanumeric characters, and must not contain spaces or special characters, except the underscore (_) or hyphen (-) characters. The maximum name length is 200 characters. The name need not be unique.

    • Enable High Availability: Select to enable HA. See Section 6.4, “High Availability (HA)” for more information on HA.

    • Description: A description of your virtual machine.

    • Server: A Oracle VM Server on which to run the virtual machine. If you do not have a preference as to which Oracle VM Server to use, select Any and the Oracle VM Server with the most available resources is selected to host the virtual machine.

    • Operating System: The operating system of your virtual machine. This setting enables or disables certain virtual machine settings that your guest operating system may require.

    • Domain Type: The domain type of the virtual machine. Oracle recommends you create paravirtualized virtual machines if possible, as the performance of a paravirtualized virtual machine is superior to that of a hardware virtualized guest.

      • Xen HVM: Hardware virtualization, or fully virtualized. When you select this option you must supply an ISO file in a repository (in the Create Storage step of the wizard) from which to create the virtual machine. See Section 7.5.5, “ISO Files (CD/DVD Images)” for information on importing an ISO file into a repository.

      • Xen HVM, PV Drivers: Identical to Xen HVM, but with additional paravirtualized drivers for improved performance of the virtual machine. See Section 7.11, “Installing Paravirtualized Drivers” for more information about using paravirtualized drivers. This Domain Type is used to run Microsoft Windows guest operating systems with an acceptable performance level.

      • Xen PVM: Paravirtualized. Enables you to select a location for the mounted ISO file from which to create the virtual machine. Before you create the virtual machine using the paravirtualized method, mount the ISO file on an NFS share, or HTTP or FTP server. You supply the location of the mounted ISO file in the Network Boot Path field in the Boot Options step of the wizard.

        For information on creating a mounted ISO file, see Section 7.4, “Virtual Machine Installation Media”.

    • Maximum Memory (MB): The maximum size of the memory the virtual machine is to be allocated. When you edit a running virtual machine, this is the maximum amount of memory that can be allocated.

    • Memory (MB): The size of the memory the virtual machine is to be allocated. This is the memory allocation to use when starting the virtual machine. You can change this when editing a running virtual machine, up to the value of the maximum memory set in the previous field. For HVM guests, increasing or decreasing the memory requires a restart of the virtual machine. For PVM guests, no restart is required.

    • Processors: The number of processors to be used by the virtual machine. The number of processors is expressed in number of physical CPU cores, and is limited to 128.

    • Priority: The CPU priority of the virtual machine. You can select a high (100), intermediate (50), or low (1) priority for the virtual CPUs, or a self-defined priority, by moving the slider. The higher the priority, the more physical CPU cycles are given to the virtual machine.

    • Processor Cap %: Increase or decrease the percentage to which the virtual CPUs can receive scheduled time. This parameter defines the maximum percentage to which the virtual CPUs can receive scheduled time. You can select a high (100), intermediate (50), or low (1) percentage of scheduled time for the virtual CPUs, or a custom percentage, by moving the slider. Use this parameter to keep low priority virtual machines from consuming too many CPU cycles on a Virtual Machine Server.

    The Priority and Processor Cap% parameters are passed to the hypervisor, which determines the percentage. These two parameters are always combined by the hypervisor and are a key factor for the performance of the virtual machine.

    Click Next.

  3. The Setup Networks step is displayed in the wizard.

    This figure shows the Setup Networks step in the Create Virtual Machine wizard.

    Select one or more VNICs from the Select a VNIC column and add them to the virtual machine. A virtual machine can have up to eight virtual network interfaces for emulated guests and up to 31 for PVM guests.

    A PVM guest requires network connectivity to perform the operating system install and must have a VNIC.

    To select VNICs from another network, select the network in the Select a Network for your VNIC drop down. The available VNICs for that network are then displayed in the Select a VNIC column.

    If you do not want to specify any network settings, check the Do not specify any VNICs or network box.

    Click Next.

  4. The Create Storage (Optional) step is displayed in the wizard.

    This figure shows the Create Storage (optional) step in the Create Virtual Machine wizard.

    In the Create Storage (Optional) step, optionally create a virtual disk. Enter or select the following to create a virtual disk:

    • Repository: The repository on which the virtual disk is to be created.

    • Virtual Disk Name: The name of the virtual disk to be created and made available to the virtual machine. See Section 7.5.6, “Virtual Disks” for more information about using virtual disks.

    • Size (GB): The disk size in GB of the virtual disk.

    • Shareable: Whether the virtual disk should be shareable (read/write) with other virtual machines.

    • Description: A description of the virtual disk.

    • Allocation Type: Whether to use a Sparse Allocation or Non-sparse Allocation. Sparse Allocation creates a sparse disk, so the size of the disk is initially small and increases as it is used. Sparse allocation is faster than using Non-Sparse Allocation when creating a virtual machine. Non-Sparse Allocation creates the entire disk when the virtual machine is created, and so is slower than creating a sparse disk.

    Click Next.

    Note

    If your virtual machine needs more than one disk, you can create the disk(s) afterwards in the repository, and add them to the virtual machine. See Section 7.5.6, “Virtual Disks” for more information.

  5. The Select Disks and ISOs step is displayed in the wizard.

    This figure shows the Select Disks and ISOs step in the Create Virtual Machine wizard.

    Select the desired storage configuration of your virtual machine, such as virtual and physical disk(s) and ISO file(s).

    • ISOs: Select the ISO files to add to the virtual machine. ISO files are used to create HVM and PVHVM virtual machines. When creating a virtual machine from an ISO file, you must use a single file. Installations that span multiple ISO files are not supported. ISO files cannot be used to create PVM virtual machines.

    • Virtual Disks: Select the desired virtual disk(s) to add to the virtual machine.

    • Storage Select the physical disks to add to the virtual machine. The physical disks are the disks in a storage array. Physical disks can be shared by virtual machines.

    Click Next.

  6. The Setup Disk Order step is displayed in the wizard.

    This figure shows the Setup Disk Order step in the Create Virtual Machine wizard.

    Set the order the disks should appear in the virtual machine. The disk with the boot partition or installation media should be the first disk listed.

    An HVM guest can have up to four disks, including empty CD/DVD drives. A PVM or PVHVM guest can have up to 52 disks. Only one slot can contain an empty CD/DVD.

    Tip

    When editing a running virtual machine, you can change the CD/DVD using this dialog box and the CD/DVD is mounted in the operating system.

    Click Next.

  7. The Boot Options step is displayed in the wizard.

    This figure shows the Create Virtual Machines step in the Create Virtual Machine wizard.

    Select the boot media and order for your virtual machine.

    If you are creating a hardware virtualized virtual machine (HVM), you can choose the PXE boot option. If so, remember to put PXE first in the Select your boot options field, and change the boot order again after installation and before rebooting the VM. To use PXE, you must configure a PXE/tftp environment to offer the necessary boot media and instructions to the VM.

    If you are creating a paravirtualized virtual machine (PVM), you also have the Network option available (not shown in here). If so, specify Network to be at the top of the right hand side column, and enter the location of the mounted ISO file from which to perform the operating system installation in the Network Boot Path field (also not shown here), for example

    http://example.com/Enterprise-R5-U7-Server-x86_64-dvd.iso/

    For information on creating a mounted ISO file, see Section 7.4, “Virtual Machine Installation Media”.

    You cannot use the Network Boot Path field to boot a virtual machine using PXE. This field can only be used to specify the path to a mounted ISO file to use when installing a PVM guest.

    Click Finish.

The virtual machine is created. The status of the virtual machine is Stopped. Now you can start and log in to the virtual machine.

To access the virtual machine, select the Home view, and go to the Server Pools folder. Select the server pool and find the virtual machine in the Virtual Machines tab in the management pane.

If you created a PVM, there are some steps you should take after the operating system installation is completed:

  1. Stop the virtual machine.

  2. Edit the virtual machine and remove PXE from the Boot Order column in the Boot Options step of the Edit Virtual Machine wizard.

  3. Start the virtual machine and complete the installation if necessary.

To edit the virtual machine configuration information, see Section 7.9.9, “Editing a Virtual Machine”.