Boot a guest VM from CD or DVD in XenServer

In order to boot from cd or dvd you need to change the guest virtualization type from HVM (fully virtualized) to PV (paravirtualized).

xe vm-param-set HVM-boot-policy="BIOS order" uuid=[uuid of your vm]

After you have booted from dvd, change back to fully virtualized mode:

xe vm-param-set HVM-boot-policy="" uuid=[uuid of your vm]

Read more about difference between HVM and PV:

http://serverfault.com/questions/222010/difference-between-xen-pv-xen-kvm-and-hvm

8 thoughts on “Boot a guest VM from CD or DVD in XenServer

    • Dave says:

      OMG Ben,

      Thank you for that!!

      I was beginning to think that I was the only one who thought it was crazy to ask users of XenCenter to ssh into the xenserver, run `xe vm-set…`, install their OS from an ISO, and then run `xe-set…` every single time you wan’t to deploy a new image!!

      Your method is much more sensible!

      Dave

  1. Henrik Langos says:

    The Option might be new in XenServer 6.5 (and the associated XenCenter). My problem is switching _back_ to PV mode after doing repairs by booting from an ISO image.

    Setting HVM-boot-policy to an empty string via ssh into the XenServer host (or via the “Console” tab in XenCenter) seems to do the trick.
    I just wonder if this will undo all the “damage” that booting into recovery mode has caused.

    -henrik

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