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3.2. Starting the Virtual Machine Using the Run Once Option

3.2.1. Installing Windows on VirtIO-Optimized Hardware

Install VirtIO-optimized disk and network device drivers during your Windows installation by attaching the virtio-win.vfd diskette to your virtual machine. These drivers provide a performance improvement over emulated device drivers.
Use the Run Once option to attach the diskette in a one-off boot different from the Boot Options defined in the New Virtual Machine window. This procedure presumes that you added a Red Hat VirtIO network interface and a disk that uses the VirtIO interface to your virtual machine.

Note

The virtio-win.vfd diskette is placed automatically on ISO storage domains that are hosted on the Manager server. An administrator must manually upload it to other ISO storage domains using the engine-iso-uploader tool.

Procedure 3.2. Installing VirtIO Drivers during Windows Installation

  1. Click the Virtual Machines tab and select a virtual machine.
  2. Click Run Once.
  3. Expand the Boot Options menu.
  4. Select the Attach Floppy check box, and select virtio-win.vfd from the drop-down list.
  5. Select the Attach CD check box, and select the required Windows ISO from the drop-down list.
  6. Move CD-ROM to the top of the Boot Sequence field.
  7. Configure the rest of your Run Once options as required. See Section A.5, “Explanation of Settings in the Run Once Window” for more details.
  8. Click OK.
The Status of the virtual machine changes to Up, and the operating system installation begins. Open a console to the virtual machine if one does not open automatically.
Windows installations include an option to load additional drivers early in the installation process. Use this option to load drivers from the virtio-win.vfd diskette that was attached to your virtual machine as A:. For each supported virtual machine architecture and Windows version, there is a folder on the disk containing optimized hardware device drivers.

3.2.2. Opening a Console to a Virtual Machine

Use Remote Viewer to connect to a virtual machine.

Procedure 3.3. Connecting to Virtual Machines

  1. Install Remote Viewer if it is not already installed. See Section 1.4.1, “Installing Console Components”.
  2. Click the Virtual Machines tab and select a virtual machine.
  3. Click the console button or right-click the virtual machine and select Console.
    • If the connection protocol is set to SPICE, a console window will automatically open for the virtual machine.
    • If the connection protocol is set to VNC, a console.vv file will be downloaded. Click on the file and a console window will automatically open for the virtual machine.

Note

You can configure the system to automatically connect to a virtual machine. See Section 2.2.4, “Automatically Connecting to a Virtual Machine”.