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. The ISO is configured as a virtual CDROM device within the virtual machine's BIOS. At boot, the virtual machine is able to boot from the virtual CDROM like a regular physical system. See Section 7.3, “Where are Virtual Machine Resources Stored?” for information on how these files are stored in a repository.

Unlike a hardware virtualized machine, a paravirtualized machine does not have a BIOS and the kernel must be loaded directly. Therefore, the virtual machine requires direct access to a kernel that can be loaded at boot. Oracle VM Manager cannot be used to manage this process, since it is not possible to predict how networking has been configured for every deployment. The virtual machine network is frequently separated from the management network using VLANs or multiple networks, so that an Oracle VM Server is unable to present a loopback mounted ISO directly to the virtual machine. This means that to install a PVM guest from an ISO file, you must first mount the ISO on an NFS, HTTP or FTP server that is accessible to the virtual machine on the virtual machine network. During the creation of the guest, you provide a network boot path that provides a URI to the mounted installation media. Examples showing how to set up your environment to cater for PVM installation media are provided in ISO Provisioning for PVM Guest Installations in the Oracle VM Administrator's Guide

More commonly, virtual machines are deployed using either templates or assemblies. Templates are essentially clones of a single existing virtual machine. As such, they can be reused and distributed to quickly deploy a preinstalled and preconfigured virtual machine. Assemblies are similar to templates, although they can contain multiple virtual machines and are provided in the more universal Open Virtualization Format.

See Section 4.6, “How are Virtual Machine Templates Managed?” for information on working with virtual machine templates. See Section 4.7, “How are Assemblies Managed?” for information on working with assemblies. See Section 4.8, “How are ISO Files (CD/DVD Images) Managed?” for information on working with ISO files.