Virtual machines require some form of installation media, whether it be a template, assembly, ISO file, or mounted ISO file. Different domain types may require slightly different installation source files. Table 7.2, “Virtual machine installation sources” lists the installation sources available for HVM and PVM guests.

When you create an HVM guest from an ISO file, you must supply an ISO file which has been preloaded into a storage repository that is presented to the Oracle VM Server on which the virtual machine is to be deployed. See Section 7.5.5, “ISO Files (CD/DVD Images)” for information on importing ISO files.

When you create a PVM guest from an ISO file, you cannot use an ISO file from a repository to install the operating system. Oracle VM requires that the ISO file is mounted so that its internal filesystem contents are available during the installation of the operating system for a PVM guest. The mounted ISO file can be made available via an NFS, HTTP or FTP server. When you specify the location of the installation media in the Network Boot Path field in the Create Virtual Machine wizard, you enter the NFS, HTTP or FTP path to the mounted ISO file. The following examples show how to create and use mounted ISO files on an NFS share, and on an HTTP server.

# mkdir -p /isos/EL5u6-x86_64
# mount -o ro,loop /path/Enterprise-R5-U6-Server-x86_64-dvd.iso /isos/EL5u6-x86_64
# exportfs *:/isos/EL5u6-x86_64/

nfs:example.com:/isos/EL5u6-x86_64

# cd /var/www/html
# mkdir EL5u6-x86_64
# mount -o ro,loop /path/Enterprise-R5-U6-Server-x86_64-dvd.iso EL5u6-x86_64

http://example.com/Enterprise-R5-U6-Server-x86_64-dvd.iso/