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10.2. Setting Up Your Virtual Systems

In order to work with virtual guest systems, you must first create a kickstart profile that will allow you to easily provision virtual guests, then you must provision the guests.

10.2.1. Create a Kickstart Profile for the Guest Systems

  1. Log on to the Satellite's web interface. Navigate to the Kickstart Overview screen by clicking on the Manage Kickstarts link in the Tasks widget in Overview, or by clicking on Systems in the top navigation bar ⇒ Kickstart from the left navigation bar.
  2. On the Kickstart Overview page, click the Create a new Kickstart Profile link in the Kickstart Actions widget in the upper right corner.
  3. The next page displayed is Step 1 of the kickstart profile creation process:
    1. Enter a label for the profile that will allow you to distinguish it from the other profiles. A good choice would be guest-system.
    2. For the Base Channel field, select Red Hat Enterprise Linux $PRODUCT (v.5 for $ARCH) where $ARCH is the architecture of your host system's operating system and $PRODUCT is either Server or Client.

      Note

      Red Hat Enterprise Linux Client 5 may not be available for selection if you did not sync the Client software channels to your Satellite.

      Tip

      Please note that the channel labels for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Desktop refer to 'server' and 'client' respectively.
    3. For the Kickstartable Tree field, you should select ks-rhel-$ARCH-$PRODUCT-5 where $ARCH is the architecture of your host system and $PRODUCT is either 'server' or 'client', depending on which product with which you would like to provision your guest.
    4. Select Para-Virtualized Guest for the Virtualization Type field.

      Note

      If you are changing the Virtualization Type of an existing kickstart profile, it may also modify the bootloader and partition options, potentially overwriting any user customizations. Be sure to review the Partitioning tab to verify these settings when changing the Virtualization Type.
    5. Finally, click the Next button in the lower right of the screen to continue on to the next step.
  4. For Step 2 of the kickstart profile creation process, select the location of the distribution files for the installation of your guest system. There should already be a Default Download Location filled out and selected for you on this screen. Click the Next button on this screen to continue to Step 3.

    Note

    As in the previous step, if the default download location is missing, you may not have successfully synced software channel content to your Satellite from Red Hat's servers.
  5. For Step 3 of the kickstart profile creation process, choose a root password for the guest system you are provisioning, and click Next to finish creation of the profile.
  6. This completes kickstart profile creation. After completing Step 3 you should be taken to the profile details. You may browse through the various tabs of the profile and modify the settings as you see fit, but this is not necessary as the default settings should work well for the majority of cases. While the interface allows you to allocate less, we strongly recommend allocating at least 2 GB of storage for your guest system with this kickstart profile.

10.2.2. Provision Your Guest Systems

  1. Log into the Satellite's web interface. Browse to your host system's profile by clicking on the Systems tab in the top navigation bar, and click on the system's name.
  2. To schedule a kickstart for a guest system, go to the Virtualization ⇒ Provisioning tab in the host system's profile. For the Guest Name field choose guest1. For the Memory Allocation, Virtual CPUs, and Storage fields, the default values should be fine. Feel free to change these as desired, taking note of the advice provided for each field in the interface. For the Kickstart Profile field, select the guest system profile we created in the last step.
  3. Finally, click on the Schedule Kickstart and Finish button in the lower-right corner of the screen. You will be taken to the Kickstart Status page where you can follow along with the guest's kickstart progress. After ten to fifteen minutes the status screen should indicate the kickstart successfully completed. To view your new guest, click on the Virtualization tab of the host system's profile on the Satellite. To view a list of virtual systems, navigate to Systems ⇒ Systems ⇒ Virtual Systems.

    Note

    If you do not see the Initiate a kickstart for a Xen guest message on the Kickstart Status page shortly after scheduling the kickstart of the guest, you may be missing osad on your host.
    Host systems require the osad package in order to be responsive to commands sent from the Satellite, such as start, pause, resume, and shutdown. If osad is not installed and running, the host system will not receive these commands from the web interface for 2.5 hours, or the next time that the RHN daemon runs.
    You can check whether or not osad is installing and running by checking the OSA Status field in the host system's profile on the Satellite. If the field does not exist or indicates a failure of that the system has not contact Satellite in several minutes, then you will need to install yum (using the command yum install -y osad) before you can successfully provision a guest on the host.

    Tip

    You may receive the following message from the Kickstart Status page during the guest's kickstart: 
    The install process on the guest system has not communicated to RHN in
the past n minutes.  This may be due to a hung install process, or it
may just be due to a slow install because of hardware constraints.  A
log of the installation process is available, you may wish to review
it to troubleshoot this issue.
    Be patient and do not worry if you see this message unless more than twenty minutes have passed. To check if the kickstart is continuing, check the installation log to make sure there are no errors, and as you reload the Kickstart Status page check to see that the Last File Request field continues to be updated.
  4. If you would like to register additional guests to your host, repeat the steps above. It is important to remember that you can only provision one guest at a time. If you attempt to schedule a guest kickstart while another is currently taking place, the current guest kickstart process will be canceled and the new guest kickstart process will begin.
  5. View your newly-created virtual guest's system in the Satellite's web interface by clicking on the Virtualization tab in the host system's profile. Then, click on the profile name of your virtual system. You will be brought to its Satellite system profile.