Lesson 2 - Creating a Virtual Machine (VM)
Video Activity
Creating a Virtual Machine (VM) This lesson focuses on creating a virtual machine (VM) and looking at the many options available in building one. You can build two types: Typical: faster and most efficient, uses default settings Custom: you can pick the hardware, the number of CPUs and the amount of memory available Participants learn step by step ...
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Video Description
Creating a Virtual Machine (VM) This lesson focuses on creating a virtual machine (VM) and looking at the many options available in building one. You can build two types:
-
Typical: faster and most efficient, uses default settings
-
Custom: you can pick the hardware, the number of CPUs and the amount of memory available
Participants learn step by step instructions in the different methods of creating virtual machines (VMs). The instructor also touches briefly upon the use of virtual appliances.
Video Transcription
00:04
Okay, welcome to Lesson two for module three. And this month or this lesson will be creating a BM and looking at a lot of different options that you have available to you.
00:14
And you get to do all this activity in the lab following this lecture.
00:18
So starting off with creating a virtual machine, we have two choices here. We can do a typical or a custom VM
00:25
typical is much quicker. They're less things to specify,
00:29
and you can get your work done a little bit more
00:33
speedily.
00:35
Uh, we start off with needing the virtual machine name.
00:38
We need to know its location in the inventory
00:41
and by inventory, we mean the
00:44
actual structure of seeing your host
00:48
and any folders that you've created to organize virtual machines. You can you can use those folders
00:53
thio keep certain bm separate from each other. You could have all of your Web server be EMS in one folder. You could have your production v EMS and the folder
01:03
development Test PM's,
01:04
and we'll explore how that looks. Once you're actually doing the lab,
01:10
you have to choose the data store where the virtual machine files will be,
01:14
uh, hold
01:15
and you'll pick your guest operating system and version.
01:19
So there's a drop down menu for different versions of windows, different versions of Linux.
01:26
Then you have to pick some parameters for your desk,
01:29
so the obvious first choice is the size of the disc.
01:33
Specify that in megabytes gigabytes
01:36
again because it's out of date a store. We have to make sure that that danced or does have the capacity that we require for this virtual machine.
01:44
So there's one little thing to keep. Keep in mind.
01:48
Then you have your provisioning method.
01:49
Three different options here.
01:52
Ah, thick, lazy zeroed
01:53
gives fast performance.
01:57
The full size of the disc does get pre allocated.
02:00
So if I pick a four gigabyte disk, I have to wait for four gigabytes of space to be allocated on my data store.
02:09
Ah, the advantage of using a lazy zeroed is that
02:14
there's a good chance that my blocks of storage will be continuous
02:17
because they are pre allocated laid out. That means that if I need 1000 blocks to store my four gigabytes just as an example,
02:25
most likely Block one will be sitting next to block two on the disk
02:30
and two will be sitting next to block three.
02:34
Ideally, that's what should happen.
02:37
The data actually gets,
02:38
or the blocks actually get zeroed out and used
02:42
when the discus first written, too.
02:46
So this is a good option. If you have a reasonable amount of time
02:50
to toe, wait for your deployment to finish.
02:54
The next option is thick, eager, zeroed.
02:57
In this case, this is slower. It's also proportionately slower to relative to the size of the drive.
03:05
So a two gig disk would be faster than a four gig disk. Because I have two pretty allocate all of those blocks
03:10
and because we were eager zeroing. That means that we're writing zeros to those blocks
03:16
so that they are
03:19
giving us the best possible chance of getting into contiguous blocks.
03:23
So you're you zero them all out, and then they should be ordered in a nice fashion on your actual storage medium.
03:30
In this case,
03:31
when the disc gets created, all of the storage is also created as well, so it takes a long time. But you get good performance once
03:39
the disk is actually
03:43
finished provisioning
03:45
and then the last option, which we talked about earlier is thin provisioning.
03:49
In this case, it's the very fastest option.
03:52
The layout on your physical storage will vary because the thin provisioning starts off with only reserving a very small amount of data,
04:00
and it grows As you write more, discover more data to that desk.
04:05
One thing to say about thin provisioning you can get yourself in a little bit of trouble
04:10
is
04:11
I could have 10 gigabytes of data store capacity
04:15
and I could thin provisions
04:17
15 gigabytes worth of desk
04:19
that will actually work
04:21
because all 13 gigabytes is not allocated
04:25
when the disc is created.
04:27
I can't do that with these two options
04:30
and so that you can get yourself in trouble if you
04:32
if you've been provisioned Maur disc than your data store can actually handle
04:38
at some point you might run out of space because of that.
04:41
So keep that in mind.
04:44
Uh, all the The block's got zero when they get allocated in the thin provisioning
04:49
scenario. So, as I said before you, you fill the disc
04:55
total capacity as the requirements for writing more data arrives.
05:01
All right, so our second option for creating of'em is to pick the custom choice
05:06
in this case, you get to pick the virtual machine hardware. Currently, version nine is the latest.
05:13
We get to pick the number of CP use that you'd like the virtual machine to have.
05:16
If you pick typical, you just get one virtual CPU.
05:20
If I do pick the number of CP use,
05:23
for instance,
05:25
certain applications require a T least to CPS,
05:29
so you'd be able to pick that the number. Of course, Percy P was also chosen.
05:34
Choices here would depend upon the actual hardware that your host has.
05:40
So for the system that we use for the labs, I have a quad core
05:45
system
05:46
and it has,
05:47
uh,
05:48
to course per CPU. So I end up with eight virtual CP use that I can then spread out among various virtual machines.
05:57
So it's pretty simple math,
05:58
the number of course per CPU and then the number of
06:03
processor you can build from that.
06:06
I then have to pick the amount of memory
06:09
that I'd like the virtual machine to have
06:12
specified in megabytes or gigabytes,
06:15
and you pick the number off
06:16
next or virtual next that you'd like the virtual machine to have
06:20
you pick the network that the
06:23
the
06:24
the virtual network adaptor will attach to,
06:28
and we'll see how easy it is to create networks. When we get into working with the virtual networking crane virtual switches,
06:34
you also pick the type of the neck.
06:38
And if you remember from our last discussion, we have things like BMX not be mxnet to view next three
06:44
e 1000.
06:46
And these are all different options, depending on what guest operating system you're using and what
06:50
host architecture you have with
06:55
your server.
06:57
You also have to pick the You're Scottie controller. You have several choices there,
07:00
such as Para Virtual, or
07:03
are
07:04
logic sass.
07:08
Then you pick the disc. You can create a new disk
07:12
in the case of credit and do just then you give it a size and a provisioning method.
07:17
You can pick from an existing disk if you already have one created butts not allocated yet, you can point to that.
07:24
You can also use
07:26
a rod device mapping.
07:29
In this case,
07:30
you're you're eliminating one layer of virtual ization by allowing V sphere.
07:35
The virtual hardware with induce fear to act as a proxy to allot to a raw device on
07:42
your sand.
07:44
So you're You're saying administrator allocates a lung or logical unit number. Let's say 10 gigabytes.
07:50
You can use that directly without having to go through the virtual ization
07:56
later of creating a V M. F s.
07:59
And because you're using the the storage directly, that means your existing sand commands will actually work with that raw lunch.
08:09
So that's an option for those situations where you require the most performance
08:13
with your storage.
08:13
You can also pick no disk,
08:16
which might be applicable in certain narrow ranges of situations
08:22
and then last leap. We have our provisioning method
08:26
ueno from the different provisioning types here what we can do. But we also get a choice if we want to store the the disc
08:35
files with the virtual machine or not.
08:39
Typically you want to store them with the virtual machine. That way, everything is in. That one folder
08:43
just makes life easier.
08:45
You could also select the virtual device node.
08:48
This is the same concept as if you had a physical.
08:52
For instance, the host that we used these labs has a six port
08:58
some
09:00
er sas
09:01
just controller. So I have six ports on that controller that I can allocate to different P M. And that makes sense that if I want to split up the performance,
09:11
I could
09:11
path VM one years port zero vm to use port one and so on. So you get the choice to pick this,
09:18
then we go to the MoD Independent. That's a check box you can use If you want to use independent mode,
09:24
you have to select whether you want this to be persistent, which means all the changes go directly to the storage, as you would expect for a normal system
09:33
or non persistent, where the changes do not get saved
09:37
at very handy when you want to work with a system that's gonna be used for testing or some kind of a lab environment.
09:45
Okay, so after we're done with creating the virtual machine, then we have to install the guest operating system.
09:50
In this case, we have a few things to consider. First of all, you have to make sure your CD rahm, your virtual seedy Ron Dry, is connected
09:58
and connected at power on. You'll see those little chuck boxes once you're doing what you're doing. The lab.
10:05
Then you point to the ice so image that you'd like to actually install.
10:09
So this is replicating the physical act of taking a install CD and putting it in the drive and closing it.
10:16
Pay attention to those connected and connect at power on boxes, since they can sometimes cause problems. If you forget to check them, then you go toe boot the virtual machine, and it can't find any media to boot from it will try to boot from the network.
10:33
That's always because the seedy Ron wasn't connected.
10:37
So once the guest of West is installed, Daniel install VM where tools
10:43
and as I mentioned before, this is
10:45
a bunch of utilities
10:46
that improves the performance of the virtual machine.
10:50
And we also get device drivers for different things and enhances the ability to use snapshots.
10:56
So you pretty much always want to use the M or tool. There's really not a good reason to not do it
11:01
in our last thing that will export. This lab is working with virtual appliances,
11:07
so Virtual appliance
11:09
is a pre configured virtual machine
11:11
and, well, actually, uh, using a V center
11:16
server as a virtual appliance for this lab. For that, for all the labs, actually,
11:22
so you could download
11:24
virtual appliances in ovf format, which is open virtual format,
11:30
and the V M, where marketplace has a lot of those choose from or you can download appliances from lots of other vendors.
11:39
All right, so that that will get you ready for Lab three, where you'll undergo all these activities.
11:46
That's the end of the lesson. Thank you.
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