Creating new VMs - Running on Eucalyptus (part 2)

Hello there,

Now it is time to explain another method to install an OS into a VM from scratch.

We used the python-vmbuilder package, in a machine running Ubuntu 9.04. The process is very simple, as you can see below.

First, we installed the tool using the information provided in this link.

Second, we ran the following command to create the new VM:

# vmbuilder xen ubuntu --arch i386 --rootsize 600 --swapsize 256

where xen is the virtualization technology, ubuntu is the OS that we want to install, --arch indicates the desired architecture, and --rootsize and --swapsize specify the partitions sizes, in MB.

The process is straightforward. After running the command, we just had to wait a little bit and the system was created, like magic. There is absolutely nothing to do during the installation, except waiting for the end of it.

The final output is a directory with the Xen configuration file (that we used before uploading to Eucalyptus, just to install some packets) and both a root filesystem image and a swap file. The rootfs image is the one that we have to upload to Eucalyptus.

There is also some information about how to install Centos and then create the filesystem to run on Eucalpytus. You can check this information here.

Our next post will talk about the issues that we have found using with Eucalyptus the VMs we created and what we did to address those issues.

Thanks for reading.

Lucio