Install Red Hat Enterprise Linux Systems As Virtual Guests

General Information

Installing RHEL as a virtual machine.

1. Applications > System Tools > Virtual Machine Manager
2. File > New Virtual Machine
3. Follow prompts to select installation source and configure VM specs.
4. Install OS as normal.
5. Login to OS and enable network interface at boot time.

The CLI method uses the command “virt-install”.

Run by itself, you will see the required options

virt-install
ERROR    
--name is required
--memory amount in MiB is required
--disk storage must be specified (override with --disk none)
An install method must be specified
(--location URL, --cdrom CD/ISO, --pxe, --import, --boot hd|cdrom|...)

Example virt-install

virt-install \
--name=server1.example.com \
--vcpus 2 \
--memory 1024 \
--disk size=20 \
--location http://192.168.1.50/repo/CentOS/7/os/x86_64/ \
--extra-args="console=ttyS0 ks=http://192.168.1.50/repo/kickstart.cfg"

• name ⇒ fully qualified hostname of VM
• vcpus 2 ⇒ give guest VM 2 CPUs
• memory ⇒ in MBs
• disk size ⇒ in GB (since no disk path is specified, it will be stored in the default location /var/lib/libvirt/images/)
• location ⇒ location of installation files
• extra-args ⇒ a console is specified so CLI console access is enabled if needed and a path to a kickstart file will be used for install.