Chapter 1. System requirements
Your system will require the attributes listed in this chapter to successfully run virtualization on Red Hat Enterprise Linux. You will require a host running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 Server with the virtualization packages. The host will need a configured hypervisor. For information on installing the hypervisor, read Chapter 4, Installing Red Hat Virtualization packages on the host.
You require installation media for the guest systems. The installation media must be available to the host as follows:
for para-virtualized guests you require the Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 installation tree available over NFS, FTP or HTTP.
for fully-virtualized guest installations you will require DVD or CD-ROM distribution media or a bootable .iso file and a network accessible installation tree.
The types of storage supported by Red Hat Virtualization are:
a file
a physical disk partition
a locally connected physical LUN
an LVM partition
or as an iSCSI or Fibre Channel based LUN.
Use /var/lib/xen/images/ for file based guest images. If you use a different directory you must add the directory to your SELinux policy. For more information see Chapter 11, SELinux and virtualization.