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Chapter 3. Creating Virtual Machines - Simple

3.1. Creating New Virtual Machines from Templates
As a Power User you can create virtual machines as required for your environment. Creating a virtual machine is as simple as selecting a name and an operating system, and finalizing its creation with the click of a button. This chapter enables you to quickly create a virtual machine using a template with pre-configured settings.
Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization supports the following virtual machine guest operating systems:
For information on virtual machine performance parameters, refer to the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Administration Guide.

3.1. Creating New Virtual Machines from Templates

Templates for virtual machines are available from the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Manager administration portal or from the Extended User Portal under the Templates tab. You can use templates to rapidly deploy customized and pre-installed virtual machines complete with virtual disks, network interfaces, operating systems and applications.
Use the following procedure to create a new server virtual machine or a new desktop virtual machine. The only difference is that high availability cannot be configured for desktop virtual machines.
To create a virtual machine from a template
  1. Select the Virtual Machines tab in the navigation pane. Click New Server or New Desktop.
  2. The New Virtual Machine dialog displays. On the General tab, click the Based on Template drop down menu and select the required template. Enter a suitable Name and Description, and accept the default values from the template in the other fields. You can change them now or later, if necessary.
    Create virtual machine based on template
    Figure 3.1. Create virtual machine based on template

  3. Click OK. The new virtual machine is created, and displays in the list on the Virtual Machines tab. Creating a virtual machine can take a few minutes, during which time the virtual machine's status is represented by an animated hourglass symbol. The action buttons for the virtual machine are disabled until the hourglass changes to a Stop symbol. To use the virtual machine, turn it on and then connect to it. See Section 2.1, “Connecting to Virtual Machines” for details if required.
You now know how to create new virtual machines based on existing templates. However, the Power User Portal also allows further flexibility and granularity in creating virtual machines with customized properties. For instance, you can configure virtual machines to be highly available, define the default display protocol, add storage and networks. See the next chapter for details.