Quick tour

This page will give a very brief overview of how to use oVirt, assuming that you've successfully installed it using the instructions here. Note that this is a quick tour; more complete documentation can be found here.

Initial startup

Once you've gone through the install, you should be presented with the Dashboard screen that looks like:



This is the default hardware pool where all of the hardware (like physical machines and storage) will go by default. Once you are here, your first task will be to add some hardware to the pool.

Adding hosts to the hardware pool

oVirt nodes are automatically added to the hardware pool when they first bootup. You can run: 

# virsh start node3
on your host machine to start your first fake oVirt node. You can also boot up your first piece of physical hardware, and make sure it PXE boots as a oVirt node. Once your first piece of hardware (either virtual or physical) is booted, you should click on the "default" hardware pool. On the right hand side of the screen, you should then click on "Hosts", to get a screen similar to:



This means that you have successfully registered at least one piece of hardware with oVirt.

Adding storage to your hardware pools

Now you need to add some storage to your hardware pool. This is accomplished by clicking on the "Storage" tab, and then clicking on "Create Storage Server":



Right now oVirt supports two types of storage: iSCSI and NFS. If you are using the appliance, both types of storage are exported by the appliance. To access the iSCSI server, you'll need to use the following information:

To access the NFS server, you'll need to use the following information: You can also add your own NFS or iSCSI storage to the oVirt WUI; connection details will be site specific.

Adding a Virtual Machine Pool

Now that we have our physical hardware attached, we need to create a Virtual Machine Pool. All virtual machines have to live in a virtual machine pool, so there needs to be at least one in order to create virtual machines. To create a Virtual Machine Pool, click on the "Virtual Machine Pool" tab, and then click "New Virtual Machine Pool":



Here you'll just need to pick any name you want for the virtual machine pool. Once you click "Create Virtual Machine Pool", the pool you just created should show up in both the "Virtual Machine Pools" tab on the right pane, and underneath the "default" hardware pool on the left pane.

NOTE: There is a slight bug here that may cause your virtual machine pool to not show up right away. If your virtual machine pool does not show up in a tree underneath the "default" hardware pool, hold down "Ctrl" while refreshing the page.

Adding Virtual Machines

Now that we have our hardware setup, and a Virtual Machine pool, we can go ahead and create virtual machines. Click on the + sign next to the "default" hardware pool on the left pane, which should show the one and only Virtual Machine Pool we've created so far. Now click on that Virtual Machine Pool, and then click on the "Virtual Machines" tab. Click on "Add Virtual Machine" to get a screen that looks like:



All fields are required. The "Name" of the virtual machine can be anything you want. Choose which operating system you want to install (Fedora 9 is the only supported one at the moment). Assign the number of CPUs and how much memory you want your VM to use, up to the maximum you currently have available. Choose a storage volume to install the guest onto. Finally, modify the MAC address and UUID of the guest, if you desire; just using the defaults will work for most people. When you are finished, click "Add Virtual Machine" to actually create the virtual machine. Note that unless you click "Start VM Now", the virtual machine will be created, but will not be started.