Chapter 3. Installing Windows virtual machines
Installing a Windows virtual machine involves the following key steps:
- Create a blank virtual machine on which to install an operating system.
- Add a virtual disk for storage.
- Add a network interface to connect the virtual machine to the network.
- Attach the Windows guest tools CD to the virtual machine so that VirtIO-optimized device drivers can be installed during the operating system installation.
- Install a Windows operating system on the virtual machine. See your operating system’s documentation for instructions.
- During the installation, install guest agents and drivers for additional virtual machine functionality.
When all of these steps are complete, the new virtual machine is functional and ready to perform tasks.
3.1. Creating a virtual machine
When creating a new virtual machine, you specify its settings. You can edit some of these settings later, including the chipset and BIOS type. For more information, see UEFI and the Q35 chipset in the Administration Guide. .Prerequisites
Before you can use this virtual machine, you must:
- Install an operating system
- Install a VirtIO-optimized disk and network drivers
Procedure
You can change the default virtual machine name length with the
engine-configtool. Run the following command on the Manager machine:# engine-config --set MaxVmNameLength=integer-
Click
. - Click . This opens the New Virtual Machine window.
- Select an Operating System from the drop-down list.
- Enter a Name for the virtual machine.
Add storage to the virtual machine: under Instance Images, click or to select or create a virtual disk .
Click Attach and select an existing virtual disk.
or
- Click Create and enter a Size(GB) and Alias for a new virtual disk. You can accept the default settings for all other fields, or change them if required. See Explanation of settings in the New Virtual Disk and Edit Virtual Disk windows for more details on the fields for all disk types.
- Connect the virtual machine to the network. Add a network interface by selecting a vNIC profile from the nic1 drop-down list at the bottom of the General tab.
- Specify the virtual machine’s Memory Size on the System tab.
- In the Boot Options tab, choose the First Device that the virtual machine will use to boot.
- You can accept the default settings for all other fields, or change them if required. For more details on all fields in the New Virtual Machine window, see Explanation of settings in the New Virtual Machine and Edit Virtual Machine Windows.
- Click .
The new virtual machine is created and displays in the list of virtual machines with a status of Down.
