Installation guide

Chapter 9.

Installing a fully-virtualized Windows

guest

Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6 supports the installation of any Microsoft Windows operating system

as a fully virtualized guest. This chapter describes how to create a fully virtualized guest using the

command-line (virt-install), launch the operating system's installer inside the guest, and access

the installer through virt-viewer.

To install a Windows operating system on the guest, use the virt-viewer tool. This tool allows

you to display the graphical console of a virtual machine (via the VNC protocol). In doing so, virt-

viewer allows you to install a fully virtualized guest's operating system through that operating

system's installer (e.g. the Windows XP installer).

Installing a Windows operating system involves two major steps:

1. Creating the guest (using either virt-install or virt-manager)

2. Installing the Windows operating system on the guest (through virt-viewer)

Note that this chapter does not describe how to install a Windows operating system on a fully-

virtualized guest. Rather, it only covers how to create the guest and launch the installer within the

guest. For information on how to install a Windows operating system, refer to the relevant Microsoft

installation documentation.

9.1. Using virt-install to create a guest

The virt-install command allows you to create a fully-virtualized guest from a terminal, i.e.

without a GUI. If you prefer to use a GUI instead, refer to Section 6.3, “Creating guests with virt-

manager” for instructions on how to use virt-manager.

Important

Before creating the guest, consider first if the guest needs to use KVM Windows para-virtualized

drivers. If it does, keep in mind that you can do so during or after installing the Windows operating

system on the guest. For more information about para-virtualized drivers, refer to Chapter 11,

KVM Para-virtualized Drivers.

For instructions on how to install KVM para-virtualized drivers, refer to Section 11.2, “Installing the

KVM Windows para-virtualized drivers”.

It is possible to create a fully-virtualized guest with only a single command. To do so, simply run the

following program (replace the values accordingly):

# virt-install \

--name=guest-name \

--network network=default \

--disk path=path-to-disk \

--disk size=disk-size \

--cdrom=path-to-install-disk \

--vnc --ram=1024

The path-to-disk must be a device (e.g. /dev/sda3) or image file (/var/lib/libvirt/

images/name.img). It must also have enough free space to support the disk-size.