Using catalog to create Linux and Windows virtual machines in Red Hat OpenShift Virtualization
20 mins
After you have configured your Operator and created your nodes, a variety of options will become available when your instance is configured. To start, we will create either a Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® (RHEL) or a Microsoft Windows virtual machine (VM) from the catalog in the virtualization menu.
What will you learn?
- How to create RHEL VMs in Red Hat OpenShift® Virtualization
- How to create Windows VMs in OpenShift Virtualization
What you need before starting:
- Red Hat account
- OpenShift cluster running with bare metal nodes
- OpenShift Virtualization Operator installed on your node
The video above is a visual walkthrough of the steps below.
Creating a Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual machine
- From the Virtualization page on the OpenShift console, select Catalog in the left hand menu.
- The page that shows will display several options for Linux virtual machines that are available for virtualization.
- Click the Template project dropdown in the upper left and select the “linux-vms” project.
- Select the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 9 VM option.
- Here you may choose to Quick Create or customize your virtual machine.
- Note: customization options will vary, including unique passwords, data source name, and namespace.
- After changing any options as desired, the next screen will give the opportunity to review all settings. Here you may edit the CPU and memory made available, as well as disk size and networking.
- Click Next to create the virtual machine. The page will refresh. You may need to wait several minutes while it is provisioning.
- Note: you will need the VM to begin to post under the VNC console area.
- Once this posts, click Open web console to open a new tab accessing the VM.
Creating a Microsoft Windows virtual machine
- From the Virtualization page on the OpenShift console, select Catalog in the left hand menu.
- The page that shows will display several options for virtual machines that are available for virtualization.
- Click the Template project dropdown in the upper left and select the “windows-vms” project.
- Select the Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 VM option.
- Note: this type of machine does not have a Quick Create option.
- Click Next to proceed to the customize template options.
- Under Disk source, click the dropdown and select the Upload option.
- You may browse your local system for the desired Windows disk image. Once selected, the upload process will begin and take several minutes.
- After the upload is completed, you can create the virtual machine and watch its provision in the refreshed screen.
- Once this posts, click Open web console to open a new tab accessing the VM.
- Proceed with steps to change the Windows machine administrator password. Once done, the VM will be running.
Now that you have learned how to create virtual machines from the catalog, next you’ll learn how to import existing virtual machines into your OpenShift environment.
