Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 11 - VIRTUALIZATION Manual page 32

6 If you want to install from DVD or CD-Rom, add the drive to the list of available
7 By default, a single virtual network card is created for the virtual machine. It has
22 Virtualization with Xen
• File backed, which means that the virtual disk is a single image file on a
larger physical disk.
• A sparse image file, which means that the virtual disk is a single image file,
but the space is not preallocated.
• Configured from a block device, such as an entire disk, partition, or volume.
For more information about available physical storage, see
"Mapping Physical Storage to Virtual Disks"
For best performance, create each virtual disk from an entire disk or a partition.
For the next best performance, create an image file but do not create it as a sparse
image file. A virtual disk based on a sparse image file delivers the most disk-
space flexibility but slows installation and disk access speeds.
By default, a single, file-backed virtual disk is created as a sparse image file in
/var/lib/xen/images/vm_name where vm_name is the name of the
virtual machine. You can change this configuration to meet your specific require-
ments.
hard disks. To learn about device names of the available optical drives, run
hwinfo --cdrom and search for the line starting with Device File:. Add
this device file to the available hard disks of the VM Guest.
Instead of the real dvd or CD-Rom drive, you can also add the ISO image of an
installation medium. For more details, see
on Paravirtual Machines"
Note, that each CD-Rom drive or ISO image can only be used by one VM Guest
at the same time. When installing many VM Guest systems, it may be better to
use a network installation source.
a randomly generated MAC address that you can change to fit your desired con-
figuration. The virtual network card will be attached to a default bridge configured
in the host. You can also create additional virtual network cards in the Network
Adapters page of vm-install. For more details about virtual networking, see
Chapter 5, Virtual Networking
Section 6.2.1, "Virtual CD Readers
(page 49).
(page 39).
Section 6.9,
(page 65).