Changes

In the previous chapter entitled <table border="0" cellspacing="0" width="100%"><tr><td width="20%">[[Configuring and Installation Installating a Xen Hardware Virtual Machine (HVM) domainU Guest|Previous]] we explained that <td align="center">[[Xen supports two types Virtualization Essentials|Table of virtualization, full Contents]]<td width="20%" align="right">[[Virtualizing Windows Server 2008 with Xen|Next]]</td><tr><td width="20%">Configuring and paravirtualized. Full virtualization Installating a Xen Hardware Virtual Machine (also referred to hardware virtual machine or HVM) is provided to enable the virtualization of operating systems which cannot be modified to run using the faster paravirtualization method. One such category of operating system is, of course, the Microsoft domainU Guest<td align="center"><td width="20%" align="right">Virtualizing Windows family of operating systems.Server 2008 with Xen</td></table><hr>

 <htmlet>xen</htmlet>  In this chapter, therefore, we will work through steps involved in installing and running Windows XP and Windows Vista as virtualized Xen HVM guests.

If neither of the above command produce output then it is likely these features are unavailable and that your hardware is unable to run Xen HVM guests. Whilst you can still run modified operating systems (such as Linux) as paravirtualized guests you will not be able to virtualize Windows using Xen. It is also possible that the host CPU supports one of these features, but that the functionality is disabled by default in the system BIOS. To verify this, access the host system’s BIOS configuration menu during the boot process and look for an option related to virtualization support. If such an option exists and is disabled, enable it, boot the system and repeat the above commands.

Installation will require a Windows XP or Vista installation DVD. Installation may be performed directly from the DVD drive, or the DVD image may be extracted from the DVD to an ISO image residing on the filesystem of the host. To extract the ISO image from the DVD insert it into a DVD drive, unmount it is if it is automounted auto-mounted and execute the following command (substituting ''/dev/hdb'' for the matching device on your chosen Linux distribution):

Once the copy is completed the DVD can be removed from the drive and stored safely, and the ''Windows.iso'' file used to perform the installation.

Next, the amount of shadow memory may be defined. This should be equal to 2KB per MB of domain memory, plus a few MB per vcpu. In general 8Mb is sufficentsufficient:

The domain name and networking choices now need to be made. If you wish to bridge to the networking device on the host system use the following ''vif'' setting:

disk = [ 'phy:/dev/sdb,hda,w', 'phy:/dev/hdb,hdc:cdrom.,r' ]

Next the boot order of the guest needs to be defined. Clearly the CDROm CDROM device needs to be first in the boot order , at least until Windows is installed on the disk drive:

After selecting the graphical dispay display options a number of other settings are required and/or recommended:

Bringing all these settings together gives us a minimal Xen HVM configuration file for a Windows guest which looks similar to to the following:

Using config file "./hvmxenwin.cfg".