Linux Xen and vm-install

Using the open-stack XEN virtualisation we can host and create virtual machines. This may be as an alternative to commercial offerings from Citrix, VMWARE or Microsoft and Hyper-V. Xen by itself is OK but it lacks the additional management tools offered by the commercial products. We can automate the installs of virtual machines with scripts and much of the other capabilities can be managed though scripts and open source products like Nagios. In the video we look at automating installs using vm-install from the command line of the XEN host. Vm-install can be run graphically or from the command line menu, however, if the options are provided at the command line the install will proceed in the background:

click on image to enlarge

vm-install – o sles11 -n vm2
-d file:/var/lib/xen/images/vm2/disk0,xvda,disk,w
-m 256 -M 1024 –nic bridge=br0,mac=00:16:3e:a1:a1:a1
-s http://192.168.0.201/suse/sles11 -v –background
–os-settings /root/vm.xml

Now, I know that is a lot of typing but this can be automated through a script and then the process is quite simple. The options are as listed

• -o the OS template to use
• -n the vm name label
• -d the disk file to use
• –nic the network card
• -s installation source
• -v para-virtual VM
• –background do not show vm-install menu
• –os-settings the path to the autoyast or kickstart file

https://youtube.com/watch?v=3LgZYAaRlXU%3Fversion%3D3%26hl%3Den_US