4.3. Creating Virtual Machines

Now that you have created a compute cluster, a domain and a project, a storage policy, and networks, you can proceed to create virtual machines.

In our evaluation scenario, you will create a virtual machine from an image. You can either upload one or use the Cirros image shipped by default. To upload an image, open the COMPUTE > Virtual Machines > IMAGES tab. You can use ISO images and templates (ready-to-use volumes in the QCOW2 cloud image format with the OS and apps installed). Click Add Image and select an ISO image from your local machine. Specify a name for the new image and select a compatible operating system from the drop-down list. Check the Share between all projects box, if you want to use this image as a template for future VM deployments. Click Add.

Note

Acronis Cyber Infrastructure supports a wide range of Windows and Linux guest operating systems that you can deploy virtual machines from (refer to Supported Guest Operating Systems). Moreover, it uses a number of patented innovations to optimize the performance of deployed VMs. For example, Windows-based VMs should perform as if they were deployed on Hyper-V.

  1. On the COMPUTE > Virtual Machines screen, click Create virtual machine and specify a name.
  2. To create a VM from an image, select the image uploaded earlier. In the section Volumes, you will see the bootable volume automatically added, based on the image data. You can change the volume’s storage policy. To do that, click the pencil sign in the Volumes section, click the ellipsis icon in the Volumes window, select Edit, and then change the policy in the Edit volume window. You can also add new volumes to the VM here.
  3. In the section Flavor, select a flavor. This is a preset defining how many virtual CPUs and how much memory the virtual machine will have.
  4. In the section Networks, add interfaces to the virtual networks that your virtual machine should be connected to.
  5. Click Deploy to start virtual machine creation. Watch the status of the new virtual machine. Once it becomes Active, the VM is ready.

In order to access the newly created virtual machine, click its name, and then click Console in the right pane. On the Monitoring tab of the VM, you can see how much resources it uses.

Note

You can also migrate virtual machines from VMware vCenter by using the virt-v2v tool, as described in Migrating Virtual Machines from VMware vCenter.

Once your virtual machine is ready, you can perform a wide range of operations on it: stop and start, suspend and resume, reboot, migrate, and more. For more details, refer to Managing Virtual Machines.

Jul 21, 2020
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