Virtual Machine (KVM)

Prerequisites

This guide assumes you have a basic working environment, run the kvm-ok command to sanity check...

root@kvm-host:# kvm-ok
INFO: /dev/kvm exists
KVM acceleration can be used

Install Media

You need to have a local copy of the appropriate ISO. If you have the ISO file already, upload to your KVM server, alternatively download from the site using wget

• Ubuntu Desktop LTS - http://releases.ubuntu.com/16.04.3/ubuntu-16.04.3-desktop-amd64.iso

Create Virtual Machine

Parameter	Example	Usage
name	VM-Name	Name of virtual machine (typically this should match the intended hostname of the VM)
description	"Test VM to be used for X"	Description of virtual machine's purpose etc
os-type	Linux	OS family, can be Linux, Solaris, Unix or Windows
os-variant	ubuntu16.04	Distribution type for the above (run osinfo-query os to view what is available)
ram	2048	vRAM in GB
vcpus	2	vCPUs (cores)
vcpus	2	vCPUs (cores)
disk path	/vm-store/images/VM-Name.img,bus=virtio,size=50	Virtual disk path, using virtio bus and with a 50GB disk
graphics	none	If noneset, VM will be created with a serial display output (as opposed to VNC window)
cdrom	/home/user/cdrom.iso	Path to installation ISO
network	bridge:br0	Network connection details

Create Server (no GUI)

Update paths to reflect where install ISO, and where VM disk files are intended to be

virt-install \
--virt-type=kvm \
--name server-name \
--ram 1024 \
--vcpus=1 \
--os-variant=ubuntu16.04 \
--network=bridge=virbr0,model=virtio \
--graphics none \
--disk path=/mnt/md0/kvm/vm/server-name.img,size=20,bus=virtio \
--extra-args "console=ttyS0" \
--location /mnt/md0/kvm/iso/ubuntu-16.04.3-server-amd64.iso