Introducing virt-install

virt-install is an interactive command-line tool that can be used to set up the guest and then start the installation process.

Execute the virt-install command as root to begin. There are many options available with virt-install that can be passed as arguments to configure the installation to meet your virtual machine creation requirements. virt-install is a scripting-friendly command. It can be easily embedded in scripts to automate virtual machine creation.

Installing a Windows 7 Guest using the virt-install command

Before starting the operating system installation using the virt-install command, it is necessary to have a virtual disk created. To create a virtual disk, use the qemu-img command:

1. Create a virtual disk of the desired size. Here for example, we will create a 20 GB disk with the raw disk format:

   qemu-img create -f raw -o size=10G /var/lib/libvirt/qemu/win7.img
   

2. Then start virt-install by running the following command:

   virt-install \
   --name Win7 \
   --ram 1024...