Perform this task to add a VM and install a guest OS on the VM so the VM can operate.
To avoid network connectivity failures, make sure the MTU configured for a VM is smaller than or equal to the MTU of the vSwitch.
Using a common NIC or Intel e1000 NIC on a VM that uses a Windows Server 2012 or later version operating system might cause network communication failure. Use caution when you select that type of NIC for such VMs.
On the top navigation bar, click VMs. If multiple clusters exist in the system, you must also select a cluster from the left navigation pane.
On the page that opens, click Add. Select a creation method from the following options:
Create New VM: Create a VM from scratch.
Deploy from Template: Create a VM based on a VM template. For more information, see "Deploy VMs by using a VM template."
Clone a VM: Create a VM based on an existing VM. For more information, see "Clone a VM."
Import a VM: Import or restore VMs based on a VM backup file. For more information, see "Import VMs."
Import OVF Template: Create a VM based on an OVF template exported from a third-party platform. For more information, see "Deploy VMs by using an OVF template."
To change the VM icon for easy identification, click the Change Icon link.
Configure the VM as described in “Parameters.”
Click OK.
In tile view, hover over the added VM, and then click Console in the VM card. Alternatively, select the VM in the navigation pane, and then click Console on the Summary tab.
Click Virtual Drive to mount a local OS image file.
Basic info:
Select Host: Select a host for VM deployment. If you do not select a host, the system automatically place the VM on a host selected based on the criteria of fewest VMs, lowest memory usage, and lowest CPU usage.
OS: Select the operating system installed on the VM. To avoid drive operation and operating system installation failures, make sure the operating system you actually install is the same as the selected operating system in type and version.
Advanced configuration:
CPU options:
CPUs: Specify the number of vCPUs. The number of vCPUs of a VM cannot exceed the number of the CPUs on the host. Windows 7 supports a maximum of two CPUs. To improve processing performance, you can set multiple cores for each CPU.
CPU Cores: Specify the number of CPU cores. The number of CPU cores of a VM cannot exceed that of the host.
Bind Physical CPU: Bind the vCPUs of the VM to physical CPUs of the host. After that, the VM can use only the bound physical CPUs. A vCPU cannot be bound to physical CPUs across NUMA nodes. To ensure successful VM operations (for example, migrate, clone, restore, and export operations) between two hosts, you must make sure the source and destination hosts use the same NUMA architecture. This option is only available after you select a host. To avoid misbindings between vCPUs and NUMA nodes as well as VM startup failures, do not disable hyper-threading on the host after binding vCPUs to physical CPUs.
CPU Operating Mode: Select a CPU operating mode.
Compatible—Virtualizes physical CPUs of different models into vCPUs of the same model. This mode shields the difference in physical CPUs from the guest OS. To move the VM between hosts that use different CPU models, select this mode.
Host Matching—Virtualizes physical CPUs of different models into vCPUs of different models. This mode features poor compatibility but provides better performance for OSs of VMs than the Compatible mode.
Straight-Through—Enables the guest OS to access the physical CPUs directly. This mode provides higher performance than compatible and host matching modes. However, you must make sure the source and destination hosts use the same CPU model.
Addressing Mode: Select an addressing mode that matches the guest OS. Options include 64 bit and 32 bit. This parameter is available when the CPU operating mode is compatible.
Schedule Priority: Select a priority for the processes on the VM to obtain physical CPU resources during a contention. Options include High, Medium, and Low.
Reserve: Enter the guaranteed minimum CPU frequency for the VM.
Limit/Core: Enter the maximum physical CPU frequency for each CPU core of the VM.
Limit Sharing: Turn on or turn off limit sharing. If limit sharing is enabled, the CPU cores of the VM share the sum of their CPU resources and can use the idle CPU resources of other cores in addition to their own CPU resources. For example, a VM has four cores and the limit per core is 2 KHz. If limit sharing is turned off, a core can run at a maximum of 2 KHz. If limit sharing is turned on, a core can run at 2 KHz or a higher rate as long as the total frequency of all cores on the VM does not exceed 8 KHz (4 x 2 KHz).
Scale Down: Turn on or turn off online CPU scale-down, which allows online reduction of CPUs. This feature requires the support of guest OS.
Memory options:
Memory Size: Specify the memory capacity of the VM. This setting is the memory size of the guest OS. The maximum memory size available for the VM depends on the physical memory size.
Reserve: Enter the guaranteed memory size for the VM as a percentage of total available memory of the host.
Limit: Enter the maximum host memory capacity that the VM can use.
Resource Priority: Specify the priority that the VM has when it requests memory. Options include Low (the default), Medium, and High. When the VM requests more memory than its reserved memory, the host makes its memory allocation decision based on the resource priority if memory contention occurs.
Ballooning: To dynamically distribute memory among VMs without shutting down the VMs when memory contention occurs, turn on this option. To use this feature, you must install CAStools on the VM and do not perform memory hot-add.
HugePages: Enable or disable the VM to use HugePages memory of the host. You can turn on this option only if the HugePages feature is enabled on the host and the VM is shut down. In addition, this feature is mutually exclusive with memory reservation, memory limit, resource priority, and ballooning.
Network options:
Network: If you have deployed the UIS-Sec service, you can enable advanced network mode.
Basic: Select a vSwitch for the VM.
Advanced: Select a private network for the VM. The VLAN ID of the selected private network must be the same as the VLAN ID of the port profile. If no port profiles with the same VLAN ID as the private network exist, create a new port profile. To create private networks, access the UIS-Sec management platform.
Port Profile: Specify network parameters for the VM, including its VLAN, ACL, network bandwidth.
Virtual Firewall: Select a virtual firewall for the VM. The incoming and outgoing data packets on the VM will be filtered based on the firewall rules.
NIC Type: Select a NIC type for the VM. Options include Common NIC, High-Speed NIC, Intel e1000 NIC, and SR-IOV Passthrough NIC. The default NIC type is high-speed NIC, which is CVK driven. SR-IOV is available only in free-trial and UIS enhanced editions. SR-IOV passthrough NICs are not supported in advanced network mode.
Driver Type: Select the VFIO driver type for the SR-IOV passthrough NIC.
VLAN ID: Set the VLAN ID of the VM. This option is available only if the NIC type is SR-IOV passthrough.
If you configure a VLAN ID for an SR-IOV passthrough NIC, the NIC operates in access mode. For the packets sent by the VM, the VF adds VLAN tags and forwards the packets towards the destination. When receiving packets from the network side, the VF checks whether their VLAN tag matches the configured VLAN ID. If yes, the VF removes the VLAN tag and forwards the packets to the VM. If not, the VF drops the packets.
If you do not configure a VLAN ID for an SR-IOV passthrough NIC, the NIC operates in trunk mode and transparently forwards VLAN-tagged packets for the VM.
Bound IPv4/IPv6 Address: The IP address bound to the MAC address of the VM. For the NIC to communicate correctly, you must make sure the IP address assigned to the NIC is the same as the bound IP address.
Deploy Gateway: Select whether to enable automatic gateway settings deployment. Disabling this feature might cause network errors. As a best practice, select this option for only one NIC. This parameter is available in advanced network mode.
MAC: Manually specify a MAC address. If you leave the field empty, the system automatically assigns a MAC address to the VM.
Fast Forwarding: Enable fast forwarding to improve the network performance of the VM. This feature is available only for high-speed NICs.
Queue Number: Set the number of queues for receiving and sending data packets on the VM NIC. The default value is 1. Increasing the number of queues can enhance the VM's network processing capability, but it will also incur additional performance overhead, including CPU and memory consumption. Adjust this setting based on the actual situation. The number of queues can be set only if fast forwarding is enabled.
Hot Swappable: Enable or disable NIC hot swapping. This option is available only for high-speed NICs.
MTU: Specify the maximum transmission unit of the NIC, in bytes. The default is 1500. This option is available only for common, high-speed, and Intel e1000 NICs
Disk options:
Disk: Specify the disk size.
Type: Specify the storage service type of the disk. The Existing File and Block Device options are available only if a host is selected when you create the VM.
New File: A file is presented to a VM as a disk and is easier to manage than a block device. If you select this option, an empty file is created as the disk for the VM.
Existing File: Specify an existing storage volume that is not used by other VMs from the local file directory, shared file system, or network file system storage pool as the disk of the VM.
Block Device: A block device is also called a raw device, which does not have a file system, for example, a storage LUN on an IP SAN or FC SAN. Block devices are typically used in a virtualization environment that requires high performance, for example, databases and high-performance I/O compute. Specify an existing storage volume that is not used by other VMs from the RBD network storage, iSCSI network storage, or FC network storage pool as the disk of the VM.
Storage Pool: Select the storage pool on which the new disk is created.
File Name: Enter the file name of the disk if a new file is used as the disk. Select a disk formatting mode, which can be High Speed and Intelligent.
Image File: Select an existing storage volume that is not used by other VMs from the storage pool as the disk of the VM. This parameter is required when you select Existing File or Block Device for the Type parameter.
Provisioning: Select a volume provisioning mode. Options include Thin, Delay Zeroed, and Zeroed.
Thin—Allocates only as much storage space as the volume requires for its initial operations when the volume is created. If the volume requires more storage space later, you can allocate as much storage space as the volume requires as long as the maximum storage size is not exceeded. To select the thin provisioning mode, you must first enable the thin provisioning mode on the system parameter configuration page.
Delay Zeroed—Allocates the specified maximum storage size to the volume when the volume is created. Data remaining on the physical device is not erased during creation, but is zeroed out on first write from the VM.
Zeroed—Allocates the specified maximum storage size to the volume when the volume is created. Data remaining on the physical device is zeroed out during creation. It might take a longer time to create volumes in this mode than to create volumes in other modes.
Bus Type: Select a bus type. Options include IDE, USB, High-Speed, and High-Speed SCSI.
IDE—Integrated Drive Electronics. This bus type has average read and write performance and good compatibility.
USB—Universal Serial Bus. This bus type is not widely used in virtualized environments.
High-Speed—Virtio-based paravirtualized bus. This bus type has good read and write performance and good compatibility.
High-Speed SCSI—Virtio-based paravirtualized bus. This bus type has good read and write performance.
Cache Mode: Select a cache mode for VM storage files. Options include Directsync, Writethrough, Writeback, and None.
Directsync—The system reads data from the physical disk.
Writethrough—The system writes data to the host cache, and then to the physical disk.
Writeback—The system writes data to the VM cache, then to the host cache, and finally to the physical disk.
None—The system writes data to the VM cache, and then to the physical disk.
Disk Mode: Select whether to include the VM's disk in external snapshots. This parameter is available only when the VM uses a file-type disk.
Dependent—Includes the disk in external snapshots. When you use an external snapshot to restore the VM, the disk is also restored.
Independent-Persistent—Does not include the disk in external snapshots. When you use an external snapshot to restore the VM, the disk is not restored.
Hot Swappable: Enable or disable disk hot swapping. This option is available only for the high-speed bus type.
Serial Number: Serial number of the disk in the guest OS. The serial number uniquely identifies a virtual disk. You can customize the serial number of a disk. To avoid unknown errors, do not assign the same serial number to multiple virtual disks on a VM, and do not assign the same serial number to multiple VM virtual disks in a cluster or on a host.
Floppy disk options:
Floppy Disk: Select a floppy disk image. The system will automatically load the high-speed driver compatible with the selected OS version.
CD-ROM options:
CD-ROM: Select a CD/DVD or image file.
Connection Mode: Select a connection mode. When you add a VM in cluster view, you can select CD/DVD or image file as the connection mode. When you add a VM in host view, you can select only image file as the connection mode.
Additional hardware options:
Add Hardware: Click this button to select hardware options to add for the VM. Options include NIC, Disk, CD-ROM, Floppy Disk, GPU Device, USB Device, Remote USB Device, PCI Device, Watchdog, and vTPM Device. As a best practice to ensure the startup of a VM, follow these restrictions when you add PCI devices for a VM:
If the memory size of a VM is smaller than 2 GB, the total memory size of PCI devices added to the VM cannot exceed 2 GB.
If the memory size of a VM is larger than 2 GB, the total memory size of PCI devices added to the VM cannot exceed 1 GB.
GPU Device: Select a graphics processing unit (GPU) device. A GPU device acts a CPU to process images so that the CPU can perform other tasks. A VM that has a GPU or vGPU device mounted does not support cloud rainbow. If the VM is attached with a vGPU device, the following actions are not allowed when the VM is in running state: hibernate, clone as template, convert as template, and clone. If the VM is attached with a GPU device, the following actions are not allowed when the VM is in running state: hibernate, clone as template, convert as template, clone, migration by changing host, and migration by changing host and storage.
Resource Pool: Select a resource pool, which contains all available GPUs in the cluster. If you select a GPU resource pool, the physical GPU resources of the host are passed through to the VM. If you select a vGPU resource pool, the VM uses the vGPU resources of the host.
Service Template: Select a service template. The service template defines the priorities for VMs to access the resources in the resource pool. The host allocates the resources to VMs based on the priorities of the VMs if the resources are insufficient.
Driver Type: Set the GPU driver type. Only the VFIO driver is supported.
Exclusive Mode: Select whether the VM can exclusively use the specified GPU/vGPU resources. If you select Yes, the GPU/vGPU resources cannot be used by any other VMs. This feature is available only when the host has available GPU/vGPU resources that have been added to the selected GPU resource pool. To migrate a VM when this feature is enabled, make sure sufficient GPU/vGPU resources are available on the target host and the VM is powered off.
Resource Count: Set the maximum number of GPU/vGPU resources that can be used by the VM. The value depends on the resource pool type and state of the exclusive mode feature:
If you select a vGPU resource pool, only 1 is available.
If you select a GPU resource pool and exclusive mode is disabled, the value is the maximum number of GPUs on a single host in the resource pool. For example, if the resource pool has three hosts, and the hosts have three, two, and two GPUs, respectively, the value is 3.
If you select a GPU resource pool and exclusive mode is enabled, the value is the number of available GPUs on the host attached to the VM.
USB Device: Add a USB to the VM. This option is available only if you select a host when you create the VM.
Connection Mode: Set the USB connection standard. Options include USB 1.0, USB 2.0, and USB 3.0 (the default).
Remote USB: Add a remote USB to the VM. If a remote USB is used, the VM can continue to use that USB after it migrates to a new host. This option is available only if you select a host when you create the VM.
Connection Mode: Set the network USB connection standard. Options include USB 1.0, USB 2.0, and USB 3.0 (the default).
PCI Device: Add a PCI device to the VM. This option is available only if you select a host when you create the VM.
Driver Type: Set the PCI device driver type. Only VFIO is available.
Watchdog: Add a watchdog to the VM. Interrupt options include Reboot, Power Off, and Migrate.
vTPM Device: Select a TPM protocol version based on the guest OS, 1.2 or 2.0.
Basic settings:
Select Host: Select a host for VM deployment. If you do not select a host, the system automatically places the VM on a host selected based on the criteria of fewest VMs, lowest memory usage, and lowest CPU usage.
OS: Guest OS to install in the VM. The OS you actually install must be the same as the selected OS in type and version.
Advanced configuration:
CPU options:
CPUs: Specify the number of vCPUs. The number of vCPUs of a VM cannot exceed the number of the CPUs on the host.
CPU Cores: Specify the number of CPU cores. The number of CPU cores of a VM cannot exceed that of the host.
CPU Operating Mode: Select a CPU operating mode.
Compatible—Virtualizes physical CPUs of different models into vCPUs of the same model. This mode shields the difference in physical CPUs from the guest OS. To move the VM between hosts that use different CPU models, select this mode.
Host Matching—Virtualizes physical CPUs of different models into vCPUs of different models. This mode features poor compatibility but provides better performance for OSs of VMs than the Compatible mode.
Straight-Through—Enables the guest OS to access the physical CPUs directly. This mode provides higher performance than compatible and host matching modes. However, you must make sure the source and destination hosts use the same CPU model.
Addressing Mode: Select an addressing mode that matches the guest OS. Options include 64 bit and 32 bit. This parameter is available when the CPU operating mode is compatible.
I/O Priority: Select an I/O priority for the processes on the VM to read/write the disk. Options include Low, Medium, and High.
Memory options:
Memory Size: Specify the memory capacity of the VM. This setting is the memory size of the guest OS. The maximum memory size available for the VM depends on the physical memory size.
HugePages: Enable or disable the VM to use HugePages memory of the host. You can turn on this option only if the HugePages feature is enabled on the host and the VM is shut down. In addition, this feature is mutually exclusive with memory reservation, memory limit, resource priority, and ballooning.
Network options:
Network: If you have deployed the UIS-Sec service, you can enable advanced network mode.
Basic: Select a vSwitch for the VM.
Advanced: Select a private network for the VM. The VLAN ID of the selected private network must be the same as the VLAN ID of the port profile. If no port profiles with the same VLAN ID as the private network exist, create a new port profile. To create private networks, access the UIS-Sec management platform.
Port Profile: Specify network parameters for the VM, including its VLAN, ACL, and network bandwidth.
Virtual Firewall: Select a virtual firewall for the VM. The incoming and outgoing data packets on the VM will be filtered based on the firewall rules.
NIC Type: Select a NIC type for the VM. Options include Common NIC, High-Speed NIC, and Intel e1000 NIC. The default NIC type is high-speed NIC, which is CVK driven.
Bound IPv4/IPv6 Address: The IP address bound to the MAC address of the VM. For the NIC to communicate correctly, you must make sure the IP address assigned to the NIC is the same as the bound IP address.
Deploy Gateway: Select whether to enable automatic gateway settings deployment. Disabling this feature might cause network errors. As a best practice, select this option for only one NIC. This parameter is available in advanced network mode.
MAC: Manually specify a MAC address. If you leave the field empty, the system automatically assigns a MAC address to the VM.
Fast Forwarding: Enable fast forwarding to improve the network performance of the VM. This feature is available only for high-speed NICs.
Queue Number: Set the number of queues for receiving and sending data packets on the VM NIC. The default value is 1. Increasing the number of queues can enhance the VM's network processing capability, but it will also incur additional performance overhead, including CPU and memory consumption. Adjust this setting based on the actual situation. The number of queues can be set only if fast forwarding is enabled.
MTU: Specify the maximum transmission unit of the NIC, in bytes. The default is 1500. This option is available only for common, high-speed, and Intel e1000 NICs.
Disk options:
Disk: Specify the disk size.
Type: Specify the storage service type of the disk. The Existing File and Block Device options are available only if a host is selected when you create the VM.
New File: A file is presented to a VM as a disk and is easier to manage than a block device. If you select this option, an empty file is created as the disk for the VM.
Existing File: Specify an existing storage volume that is not used by other VMs from the local file directory, shared file system, or network file system storage pool as the disk of the VM.
Block Device: A block device is also called a raw device, which does not have a file system, for example, a storage LUN on an IP SAN or FC SAN. Block devices are typically used in a virtualization environment that requires high performance, for example, databases and high-performance I/O compute. Specify an existing storage volume that is not used by other VMs from the RBD network storage, iSCSI network storage, or FC network storage pool as the disk of the VM.
Storage Pool: Select the storage pool on which the new disk is created.
File Name: Enter the file name of the disk if a new file is used as the disk. Select a disk formatting mode, which can be High Speed or Intelligent.
Image File: Select an existing storage volume that is not used by other VMs from the storage pool as the disk of the VM. This parameter is required when you select Existing File or Block Device for the Type parameter.
Provisioning: Select a volume provisioning mode. Options include Thin, Delay Zeroed, and Zeroed.
Thin—Allocates only as much storage space as the volume requires for its initial operations when the volume is created. If the volume requires more storage space later, you can allocate as much storage space as the volume requires as long as the maximum storage size is not exceeded. To select the thin provisioning mode, you must first enable the thin provisioning mode on the system parameter configuration page.
Delay Zeroed—Allocates the specified maximum storage size to the volume when the volume is created. Data remaining on the physical device is not erased during creation, but is zeroed out on first write from the VM.
Zeroed—Allocates the specified maximum storage size to the volume when the volume is created. Data remaining on the physical device is zeroed out during creation. It might take a longer time to create volumes in this mode than to create volumes in other modes.
Bus Type: Select a bus type. Options include IDE, High-Speed, and High-Speed SCSI.
IDE—Integrated Drive Electronics. This bus type has average read and write performance and good compatibility.
High-Speed—Virtio-based paravirtualized bus. This bus type has good read and write performance and good compatibility.
High-Speed SCSI—Virtio-based paravirtualized bus. This bus type has good read and write performance.
Cache Mode: Select a cache mode for VM storage files. Options include Directsync, Writethrough, Writeback, and None.
Directsync—The system reads data from the physical disk.
Writethrough—The system writes data to the host cache, and then to the physical disk.
Writeback—The system writes data to the VM cache, then to the host cache, and finally to the physical disk.
None—The system writes data to the VM cache, and then to the physical disk.
Disk Mode: Select whether to include the VM's disk in external snapshots. This parameter is available only when the VM uses a file-type disk.
Dependent—Includes the disk in external snapshots. When you use an external snapshot to restore the VM, the disk is also restored.
Independent-Persistent—Does not include the disk in external snapshots. When you use an external snapshot to restore the VM, the disk is not restored.
Serial Number: Serial number of the disk in the guest OS. The serial number uniquely identifies a virtual disk. You can customize the serial number of a disk. To avoid unknown errors, do not assign the same serial number to multiple virtual disks on a VM, and do not assign the same serial number to multiple VM virtual disks in a cluster or on a host.
Floppy disk options:
Floppy Disk: Select a floppy disk image. The system will automatically load the high-speed driver compatible with the selected OS version.
CD-ROM options:
CD-ROM: Select a CD/DVD or image file.
Connection Mode: Select a connection mode. When you add a VM in cluster view, you can select CD/DVD or image file as the connection mode. When you add a VM in host view, you can select only image file as the connection mode.
Additional hardware options:
Add Hardware: Click this button to select hardware options to add for the VM. Options include NIC, Disk, CD-ROM, Floppy Disk, GPU Device, and PCI Device.