-
Open . Open a connection to the host (click ). Click the
New
button to create a new virtual machine.
-
The
Naming your virtual system
screen displays. Enter the
System Name
and click the
Forward
button.
-
The
Choosing a virtualization method
screen displays. To install a Windows based guest select the
Fully virtualized
option for full virtualization. Click the
Forward
button.
-
Choosing an installation method
displays. This screen enables you to specify the installation method and the type of operating system. For a Windows guest you must choose
fully virtualized
.
-
Specify the location for the ISO image you want to use for your Windows installation. Select the CD-ROMs, DVDs or ISO image location for the Windows installation disk.
If you chose
CD-ROM or DVD
select the device with the Windows installation disk in it. If you chose
ISO Image Location
enter the path to a Windows installation disk .iso image.
Installing guests with PXE is supported in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2. PXE installation is not covered by this chapter.
Set
OS Type
to Windows and
OS Variant
to Microsoft Windows XP
Click the
Forward
button to continue.
-
The
Assigning storage space
window displays. Choose a disk partition, LUN or create a file based image for the guest storage.
The convention for file based images in Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 all file based guest images are in the
/var/lib/xen/images/
directory. Other directory locations for file based images are prohibited by SELinux. If you run SELinux in enforcing mode, refer to
Section 10.1, “SELinux and virtualization” for more information on installing guests.
Your guest storage image should be larger than the size of the installation, any additional packages and applications, and the size of the guests swap file. The installation process will choose the size of the guest's swap file based on size of the RAM allocated to the guest.
Allocate extra space if the guest needs additional space for applications or other data. For example, web servers require additional space for log files.
Choose the appropriate size for the guest on your selected storage type and click the
Forward
button.
Note
It is recommend that you use the default directory for virtual machine images, /var/lib/xen/images/
. If you are using a different location (such as /xen/images/
in this example) make sure it is added to your SELinux policy and relabeled before you continue with the installation (later in the document you will find information on how to modify your SELinux policy)
-
The Allocate memory and CPU window displays. Choose appropriate values for the virtualized CPUs and RAM allocation. These values affect the host's and guest's performance.
Guests require sufficient physical memory(RAM) to run efficiently and effectively. Choose a memory value which suits your guest operating system and application requirements. Most operating system require at least 512MB of RAM to work responsively. Remember, guests use physical RAM. Running too many guests or leaving insufficient memory for the host system results in significant usage of virtual memory. Virtual memory is significantly slower causing degraded system performance and responsiveness. Ensure to allocate sufficient memory for all guests and the host to operate effectively.
Assign enough virtual CPUs for the guest you are virtualizing. If the guest runs a multithreaded application assign the number of virtualized CPUs it requires to run most efficiently. Do not assign more virtual CPUs than there are physical processors(or hyper-threads) available on the host system. It is possible to over allocate virtual processors, however, over allocating has a significant, negative affect on guest and host performance due to processor context switching overheads.
-
Before the installation will continue you will see the summary screen. Press
Finish
to proceed to the actual installation:
-
You must make a hardware selection so open a console window quickly after the installation starts. Click
Finish
then switch to the
virt-manager
summary window and select your newly started Windows guest. Double click on the system name and the console window opens. Quickly and repeatedly press
F5
to select a new HAL
, once you get the dialog box in the Windows install select the 'Generic i486 Platform
' tab (scroll through selections with the
Up
and
Down
arrows.
-
The installation continues with the standard Windows installation.
-
Partition the hard drive when prompted.
-
After the drive is formatted Windows starts copying the files to the hard drive.
-
The files are copied to the storage device, Windows now reboots.
-
Halt the virtual machine after the initial reboot. You must manually edit the guest's configuration file located in /etc/xen/
with the same file name as the guest name. Halt the virtual machine with xm destroy
WindowsGuest
, where
WindowsGuest
is the name of your guest.
-
Modify the disk
entry and add a cdrom
entry to the config file. Change the existing entry from:
disk = [ 'file:/var/lib/xen/images/winxp.dsk,hda,w' ]
to the following:
disk = [ 'file:/var/lib/xen/images/winxp.dsk,hda,w' ,
'file:/xen/pub/trees/MS/en_winxp_pro_with_sp2.iso,hdc:cdrom,r', ]
-
Restart your Windows guest with the xm create
WindowsGuest
command, where
WindowsGuest
is the name of your virtual machine.
-
When the console window opens, you will see the setup phase of the Windows installation.
-
If your installation seems to get stuck during the setup phase, restart the guest with virsh reboot
WindowsGuestName
. The will usually get the installation to continue. As you restart the virtual machine you will see a Setup is being restarted
message:
-
After setup has finished you will see the Windows boot screen:
-
Now you can continue with the standard setup of your Windows installation:
-
The setup process is complete, a Windows desktop displays.