7.4. Virtual Machine Installation Media

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.

Table 7.2. Virtual machine installation sources

Installation Source

HVM

PVM

Template (clone)

Yes

Yes

ISO file in repository

Yes

No

Mounted ISO file on NFS, HTTP or FTP server

No

Yes

Assembly

Yes

Yes


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. Instead, you must use a mounted ISO file. A mounted ISO file explodes the contents of the ISO file on to disk and makes the operating system installation tree available to the virtual machine. 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.

Example 7.1. Creating an installation tree on an NFS share

This example creates an installation tree for paravirtualized guests by mounting an ISO file. The installation tree is made available via an NFS share. On the NFS server, enter

# 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/

When you create the virtual machine, enter the installation location in the Network Boot Path field in the Create Virtual Machine wizard as:

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

Example 7.2. Creating an installation tree on an HTTP server

This example creates an installation tree from an ISO file that can be accessed via HTTP. On the HTTP server, enter

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

When you create the virtual machine, enter the installation location in the Network Boot Path field in the Create Virtual Machine wizard as:

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

Tip

If you have multiple ISO files (CDs), you can mount each ISO file (CD) and copy the contents into a single directory. All the ISO files are then available from the same location.