VMware Server 2 - Part 3 - Mounting an ISO image on a Datastore

Mounting ISO images onto your virtual machine can be very handy for installation and management. It removes the need for a physical CD/DVD drive to run the installation CD, upgrades and resource packages for the virtual machine.

Using ISOs for Installing Guest Operating Systems

A handy way to make it easier to install a guest operating system, is to use ISO images from the datastore as virtual CD/DVD drives.

In this example, the Slackware Linux 13.1 DVD ISO image will be downloaded to the ISO datastore and used for the guest installation.

cd /vmware/iso/   (Pre-mounted datastore directory)

wget http://www.slackwaremirror.com/slackware-13.1-install-dvd.iso


Then the rest is done from the VM Server 2 web console.

To install from an ISO image instead of a physcial CD/DVD drive, there is only a slight difference between the standard guest installation covered in part-1 and installing from an ISO image. (For larger views of the pictures, just click the image.)


In the virtual machine installation wizard, the part the concerns the ISO images is the "CD/DVD Drive" options.

In this screen, selecting the option "Use an ISO Image" will allow the user to have a virtual drive instead.

On the next wizard screen, the browse selector allows the adding of the ISO image on the server datastore.



Click  browse and the datastore selection window appears.

Browse to the ISO datastore and select the slackware-13.1-install-dvd.iso image to use as the virtual drive.

After hitting OK, the original CD/DVD properties screen appears with the correct path to the ISO image. 

Follow the rest of the wizard as if you were installing a standard virtual machine on the server.

Once the wizard is finished, starting the guest OS from the console will start the installation of the OS from the bootable Slackware Linux ISO image.

Install as per normal. 


Changing the Virtual CD/DVD Drive ISO Image

After installing a guest operating system, you may want to mount another ISO image for upgrades of operating systems or installing other applications.

To change the ISO image, go to the console and stop the virtual machine.

Under the summary section of the virtual machine's console tabs, in the hardware panel, select the "Edit" option under the CD/DVD Drive subsection to bring up the CD/DVD drive options window.

In this window, the user can select the connection as a ISO image in the radio buttons. Click browse to select the ISO image from the server datastore. Once the image is selected, click OK and re-power the virtual machine to have access to the new CD/DVD image. Now the user is ready to run the application install CD/DVD or operating system upgrade disc.

Mounting ISO images as virtual CD/DVD drives is very handy, and means you don't have to maintain a store of discs. But wait, there is more to come in "VWware Server 2 - parts 4 and 5" of the blog. I talk about monitoring the server, changing system resources and clustering the VMware server, among other things VM technical. Stay tuned...