Installation guide

Chapter 6. Guest virtual machine installation overview

After you have installed the virtualization packages on the host system you can create guest

operating systems. This chapter describes the general processes for installing guest operating

systems on virtual machines. You can create guest virtual machines using the New button in virt -

manag er or use the command line interface vi rt-i nstal l . Both methods are covered by this

chapter.

Detailed installation instructions are available in the following chapters for specific versions of Red

Hat Enterprise Linux and Microsoft Windows.

6.1. Guest virt ual machine prerequisit es and considerat ions

Various factors should be considered before creating any guest virtual machines. Not only should

the role of a virtual machine be considered before deployment, but regular ongoing monitoring and

assessment based on variable factors (load, amount of clients) should be performed. Some factors

include:

Perf o rmance

Guest virtual machines should be deployed and configured based on their intended tasks.

Some guest systems (for instance, guests running a database server) may require special

performance considerations. Guests may require more assigned CPUs or memory based on

their role and projected system load.

In p u t /O ut p u t req u irement s an d t ypes o f In p u t /O u t p u t

Some guest virtual machines may have a particularly high I/O requirement or may require

further considerations or projections based on the type of I/O (for instance, typical disk

block size access, or the amount of clients).

St o rage

Some guest virtual machines may require higher priority access to storage or faster disk

types, or may require exclusive access to areas of storage. The amount of storage used by

guests should also be regularly monitored and taken into account when deploying and

maintaining storage.

Net wo rkin g an d n et wo rk in f rast ru ct u re

Depending upon your environment, some guest virtual machines could require faster

network links than other guests. Bandwidth or latency are often factors when deploying and

maintaining guests, especially as requirements or load changes.

Req u est req uiremen ts

SCSI requests can only be issued to guest virtual machines on virtio drives if the virtio

drives are backed by whole disks, and the disk device parameter is set to l un, as shown in

the following example:

<emulator>/usr/libexec/qemu-kvm</emulator>

6.2. Creat ing guest s wit h virt -inst all

Red Hat Ent erp rise Linux 6 Virt ualiz at ion Host Configurat ion and G uest Inst allat ion G uide