[thumbnail="screenshot/gui-create-vm-os.png"]
-When creating a VM, setting the proper Operating System(OS) allows {pve} to
-optimize some low level parameters. For instance Windows OS expect the BIOS
-clock to use the local time, while Unix based OS expect the BIOS clock to have
-the UTC time.
+When creating a virtual machine (VM), setting the proper Operating System(OS)
+allows {pve} to optimize some low level parameters. For instance Windows OS
+expect the BIOS clock to use the local time, while Unix based OS expect the
+BIOS clock to have the UTC time.
+[[qm_system_settings]]
+System Settings
+~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
+
+On VM creation you can change some basic system components of the new VM. You
+can specify which xref:qm_display[display type] you want to use.
+[thumbnail="screenshot/gui-create-vm-system.png"]
+Additionally, the xref:qm_hard_disk[SCSI controller] can be changed.
+If you plan to install the QEMU Guest Agent, or if your selected ISO image
+already ships and installs it automatically, you may want to tick the 'Qemu
+Agent' box, which lets {pve} know that it can use its features to show some
+more information, and complete some actions (for example, shutdown or
+snapshots) more intelligently.
+
+{pve} allows to boot VMs with different firmware and machine types, namely
+xref:qm_bios_and_uefi[SeaBIOS and OVMF]. In most cases you want to switch from
+the default SeabBIOS to OVMF only if you plan to use
+xref:qm_pci_passthrough[PCIe pass through]. A VMs 'Machine Type' defines the
+hardware layout of the VM's virtual motherboard. You can choose between the
+default https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_440FX[Intel 440FX] or the
+https://ark.intel.com/content/www/us/en/ark/products/31918/intel-82q35-graphics-and-memory-controller.html[Q35]
+chipset, which also provides a virtual PCIe bus, and thus may be desired if
+one want's to pass through PCIe hardware.
[[qm_hard_disk]]
Hard Disk
.Fixed Memory Allocation
[thumbnail="screenshot/gui-create-vm-memory.png"]
-When setting memory and minimum memory to the same amount
+ghen setting memory and minimum memory to the same amount
{pve} will simply allocate what you specify to your VM.
Even when using a fixed memory size, the ballooning device gets added to the
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In order to properly emulate a computer, QEMU needs to use a firmware.
-By default QEMU uses *SeaBIOS* for this, which is an open-source, x86 BIOS
-implementation. SeaBIOS is a good choice for most standard setups.
+Which, on common PCs often known as BIOS or (U)EFI, is executed as one of the
+first steps when booting a VM. It is responsible for doing basic hardware
+initialization and for providing an interface to the firmware and hardware for
+the operating system. By default QEMU uses *SeaBIOS* for this, which is an
+open-source, x86 BIOS implementation. SeaBIOS is a good choice for most
+standard setups.
There are, however, some scenarios in which a BIOS is not a good firmware
to boot from, e.g. if you want to do VGA passthrough. footnote:[Alex Williamson has a very good blog entry about this.
Inter-VM shared memory
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
-You can add a Inter-VM shared memory device (`ivshmem`) to be able to
-share memory between the host and a guest, or between multiple guests.
+You can add an Inter-VM shared memory device (`ivshmem`), which allows one to
+share memory between the host and a guest, or also between multiple guests.
To add such a device, you can use `qm`:
Where the size is in MiB. The file will be located under
`/dev/shm/pve-shm-$name` (the default name is the vmid).
-A usecase for such a device is Looking Glass
-footnote:[Looking Glass: https://looking-glass.hostfission.com/]
+NOTE: Currently the device will get deleted as soon as any VM using it got
+shutdown or stopped. Open connections will still persist, but new connections
+to the exact same device cannot be made anymore.
+
+A use case for such a device is the Looking Glass
+footnote:[Looking Glass: https://looking-glass.hostfission.com/] project,
which enables high performance, low-latency display mirroring between
host and guest.
endif::wiki[]
Hookscripts
-~~~~~~~~~~~
+-----------
You can add a hook script to VMs with the config property `hookscript`.
projects / pve-docs.git / blobdiff