Creating a New Virtual Machine

1. On the Physical Machines page (see The Physical Machines Page) of a system licensed for two nodes, verify that both PMs are in the running state and that neither PM is in maintenance mode or in the process of synchronizing.
2. On the Virtual Machines page (see The Virtual Machines Page), click Create to open the VM Creation Wizard.
3. On the Name, Description, Protection and OS page:

   1. Type the Name and an optional Description for the VM as they will appear in the ztC Console.

      The VM name must meet the following requirements:

      • A VM name must start with a word or a number, and the name cannot include the special characters (for example, #, %, or $).
      • A VM name cannot use hyphenated prefixes such as Zombie- or migrating-.
      • A VM name has a maximum of 85 characters.
   2. Select the level of protection to use for the VM:
      • Fault Tolerant (FT)—Transparently protects an application by creating a redundant environment for a VM running across two physical machines. Use FT for applications that need greater downtime protection than HA provides.
      • High Availability (HA)—Provides basic failover and recovery, with some faults requiring an (automatic) VM reboot for recovery. Use HA for applications that can tolerate some downtime and that do not need the downtime protection that FT provides.

      For more information about these levels of protection, see Modes of Operation.

   3. For Boot Interface, select one of the following:

      • BIOS—Basic Input/Output System

      • UEFI—Unified Extensible Firmware Interface

      Notes:  

      1. Ensure that the guest operating system supports the Boot Interface that you select; otherwise, the guest operating system cannot boot properly. For a list of guest operating systems and boot interfaces that are supported on ztC Edge systems, see Tested Guest Operating Systems.
      2. You can set the Boot Interface only when creating a VM. You cannot modify the setting later.
   4. For Boot From, select one of the following as the boot source:
      • VCD—The boot source is a VCD. Select a source from the pull-down menu.
      • Remote ISO via Windows Share (CIFS/SMB)—The boot source is a remote ISO file on a shared network drive. You must enter values for User Name and Password. For Repository, enter a value in the format \\machine_URL\ShareName (for example, \\192.168.1.34\MyISO_Folder).
      • Remote ISO via NFS—The boot source is a remote ISO file, accessed through NFS. For Repository, enter the URL of the remote system in the format nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn (do not include http:// or https://).

      For a list of available ISO repositories, click List ISOs, and select an ISO file. The full path name of the selected ISO file appears under Repository. You cannot edit the ISO URL that is displayed.

   5. Click Next.
4. On the vCPUs and Memory page:
   1. Specify the number of vCPUs and the amount of Memory to assign to the VM. For more information, see Planning Virtual Machine vCPUs and Planning Virtual Machine Memory.
   2. Click Next.
5. On the Volumes page:
   1. Type the Name of the boot volume as it will appear in the ztC Console.

   2. Type the Volume Size of the volume to create in gigabytes (GB). For more information about allocating storage, see Planning Virtual Machine Storage.

   3. If applicable, create additional data volumes by clicking Add New Volume and specifying the parameters for each volume. (You can also add volumes after you create the VM by using the Reprovision Virtual Machine wizard, as described in Creating a Volume in a Virtual Machine.)
   4. Click Next.
6. On the Networks page, select the shared networks to attach to the VM (for more information, see Planning Virtual Machine Networks). You can also enable (or disable) the network and specify the MAC address. To continue, click Next.

7. On the Creation Summary page:

   1. Review the creation summary. If you need to make changes, click Back.
   2. If you want to prevent a console session from automatically starting to observe the software installation, deselect Launch Console.
   3. To accept the VM as provisioned and begin the software installation, click Finish.

   The VM Creation Wizard displays progress of the creation and opens the console window, if applicable. When the console window opens, it may take up to a minute for the console to connect to the VM.

8. For Windows-based VMs, when the VM console opens, click inside the console window and be prepared to press any key to run Windows Setup from the VCD or remote ISO.

   Press any key to boot from CD or DVD...

   For Windows-based VMs with the UEFI boot type, you need to press a key within one or two seconds; otherwise, the UEFI Interactive Shell appears. If this happens, you can recover and run Windows Setup as follows:

   1. In the UEFI Interactive Shell, at the Shell> prompt, type exit and press Enter.

      Shell> exit

   2. Use the arrow keys to select Continue, and press Enter.

      Select Language
      Device Manager
      Boot Manager
      Boot Maintenance Manager
      Continue
      Reset

   3. As the VM restarts, press any key to run Windows Setup from the VCD or remote ISO.

      Press any key to boot from CD or DVD...
   4. If you miss pressing any key, and the UEFI Interactive Shell is displayed again, repeat steps a-c.
9. If applicable, observe the progress of the installation of the operating system (allow pop-ups in your browser, if necessary) and respond to any prompts in the VM console session.
10. After you install the operating system, configure the additional resources and software necessary for production use, as described in:
• Configuring Windows-based Virtual Machines
• Configuring Linux-based Virtual Machines

The VM may not reboot if installations of any of the following are aborted:

• The guest operating system, including the configuration steps
• Any middleware or applications that manipulate system files