4.8.1.2 Edit Template

You can edit a virtual machine template to change the configuration, networking, disks and boot order.

To edit a virtual machine template:

Click the Repositories tab. Select the repository in which the template is saved. Click VM Templates in the navigation tree.
Select the template to edit in the table in the management pane and click Edit Selected VM Template... .
The Edit VM Template dialog box is displayed. The dialog has four separate tabs:
- Configuration: This tab allows you to edit the following information:
  - VM Template Name: The name of the template. The maximum name length is 256 characters and may contain any character. The name need not be unique.
  - Enable Huge Pages: Whether to enable HugePages. If you enable HugePages, you must disable support for HugePages in the guest operating system. This option is not available if the virtual machine is to be deployed to a SPARC-based server pool.
  - Description: An optional description of the template.
  - Operating System: The guest operating system of the virtual machine in the template. This setting enables or disables certain virtual machine settings that your guest operating system may require.
  - Mouse Device Type: The mouse type to use for the template. This option is ignored if using a SPARC-based server pool.
  - 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 machine guest. This option is not available if the virtual machine is to be deployed to a SPARC-based server pool.
    XEN_HVM: Hardware virtualization, or fully virtualized. When you select this option you must supply an ISO file in a repository (in the Arrange Disks step of the wizard) from which to create the virtual machine. See Section 4.6.1.1, “Import ISO” 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 What are Virtualization Modes or Domain Types? in the Oracle VM Concepts Guide 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 ISO Provisioning for PVM Guest Installations in the Oracle VM Administrator's Guide.
    LDOMS_PVM: This domain type should be selected if the server pool and hypervisors use Oracle VM Server for SPARC as the hypervisor instead of Oracle VM Server for x86.
    Unknown: This hypervisor should be selected if the domain type is unknown.
  - Max. 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 guest, no restart is required.
  - Max Processors: The maximum 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.
  - 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.
    This option is ignored if using a SPARC-based server pool.
  - 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.
    This option is ignored if using a SPARC-based server pool.
    The Priority and Processor Cap% parameters are passed to the Xen hypervisor for use by the credit scheduler, which automatically load balances guest VCPUs across all available physical CPUs using an algorithm that combines these two parameters. Therefore, these parameters are a key factor for the performance of the virtual machine on x86 hardware.
    On SPARC, each virtual machine uses dedicated physical CPU threads and CPUs are not shared between virtual machines, being exclusively assigned to a single virtual machine.
- Networks: This tab allows you to manage which networks to use. Use the arrow buttons to move the networks between the Available Ethernet Networks field and the Selected Ethernet Networks field. If no networks are available, you must first create a network with the virtual machine role as a dedicated network for virtual machine traffic is required. See Section 5.1.1, “Create New Network” for information on creating a network.
- Disks: This tab allows you to edit the storage configuration of your template, such as virtual disk, physical disks, and ISO files. On a separate slot, add one or more of the following disk types:
  - Empty: An empty slot.
  - Virtual Disk: This allows you to add or create a virtual disk. Virtual disks may be shared by virtual machines, or only available to a single virtual machine.
  - Physical Disk: The physical disks are the disks in a storage array. Physical disks may be shared by virtual machines.
  - CD/DVD: This adds an ISO file in a storage repository and can be 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.
  Add or create any virtual disks to use as the virtual machine's hard disk, select any physical disks to add, and select any ISO files to use to create the virtual machine. Add the disks in the order they 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 guest can have up to 104 disks. A PVHVM guest can have up to 107 disks. An LDOMS_PVM guest can have up to 1024 disks. Only one slot can contain an empty CD/DVD.
  To create or add a virtual disk:
  1. To create a virtual disk, select Virtual Disk from the Disk Type drop-down list and click Create a Virtual Disk .
  2. The Create Virtual Disk dialog box is displayed. Enter or select the following to create a virtual disk:
    Repository: The repository in 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 How are Virtual Disks Managed? in the Oracle VM Concepts Guide for more information about using virtual disks.
    Size (GiB): The disk size of the virtual disk, in GiB.
    Description: A description of the virtual disk.
    Shareable: Whether the virtual disk should be shareable (read/write) with other virtual machines.
    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 OK.
  3. To search for an existing virtual disk to add to the virtual machine, click Select a Virtual Machine Disk . The Select a Virtual Machine Disk dialog box is displayed. Select the virtual disk to use and Click OK.
    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 4.9.1.1, “Create Virtual Disk” and Section 3.5.2.1, “Edit Virtual Machine” for more information on creating a virtual disk and editing a virtual machine.
  To add a physical disk:
  1. To add a physical disk to the virtual machine, select Physical Disk from the Disk Type drop-down list. Click Select a Virtual Machine Disk . The Select a Physical Disk dialog box is displayed. Select a physical disk from the list of available disks. If you want to leave the slot empty, select Leave Slot Empty. Click OK.
  To add an ISO file:
  1. To add an ISO file to the virtual machine, select CD/DVD from the Disk Type drop-down list. Click Select a Virtual Machine Disk . The Select an ISO dialog box is displayed. Select a Iso file from the list of available files. If you want to leave the slot empty, select Leave Slot Empty. Click OK.
    Note
    When adding an ISO file to an existing virtual machine, the ISO file is available to the operating system, but may not be mounted. To access the ISO file, you may need to mount it, for example:
    # mkdir /cdrom # mount -o loop /dev/xvdb /cdrom
- Boot Order: This tab allows you to edit the boot media order for your virtual machine.
  Select the boot media order for your virtual machine.
  If you are creating a hardware virtualized machine 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 virtual machine. To use PXE, you must configure a PXE/tftp environment to offer the necessary boot media and instructions to the virtual machine.
  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 in here), for example
```
http://example.com/Enterprise-R6-U1-Server-x86_64-dvd.iso/
```
  For information on creating a mounted ISO file, see ISO Provisioning for PVM Guest Installations in the Oracle VM Administrator's Guide.
  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.
When you have finished editing the virtual machine template, click OK to save the changes, or Cancel to exit out of the dialog without saving any changes.