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• Windows 7 (x86)
can be used to install Windows 7, 32-bit.
• Windows 7 (x64)
can be used to install Windows 7, 64-bit.
• Windows Vista (x86)
can be used to install Windows Vista 32-bit. The Enterprise edition is supported.
• Windows XP SP3 (x86)
can be used to install Windows XP Service Pack 3, 32-bit. Earlier service packs are not supported.
• Windows XP SP2 (x86)
can be used to install Windows XP Service Pack 2, 32-bit. Earlier service packs are not supported.
The Windows VM can be installed either from an install CD in a physical CD-ROM drive on the XenServer
host, or from an ISO image of your Windows media. See Appendix A, Creating ISO images for information
on how to make an ISO image from a Windows install CD and make it available for use.
Making the ISO available to XenServer hosts
To make an ISO library available to XenServer hosts, create an external NFS or SMB/CIFS share directory.
The NFS or SMB/CIFS server must allow root access to the share. For NFS shares, this is accomplished by
setting the no_root_squash flag when you create the share entry in /etc/exports on the NFS server.
Then either use XenCenter to attach the ISO library, or connect to the host console and run the command:
xe-mount-iso-sr host:/volume
Additional arguments to the mount command may be passed in, for advanced use.
If making a Windows SMB/CIFS share available to the XenServer host, either use XenCenter to make it
available, or connect to the host console and run the command:
xe-mount-iso-sr unc_path -t smbfs -o username=myname/myworkgroup
The unc_path argument should have back-slashes replaces by forward-slashes. -t cifs can be used
for CIFS instead of SMB. Examples:
xe-mount-iso-sr //server1/myisos -t cifs -o username=johndoe/mydomain
xe-mount-iso-sr //server2/iso_share -t smbfs -o username=alice
After mounting the share, any ISOs in it should be available by name from the CD pulldown list in XenCenter,
or as CD images from the CLI commands. The ISO should be attached to an appropriate Windows template.
Copying ISOs to local storage
In XenServer 3.2 and earlier, ISOs could be copied directly to the control domain into the /opt/
xensource/packages/iso directory. In XenServer 5.6 hosts, this directory is reserved for use of the
built-in ISO images, and is not intended for general use. This directory is considered to be identical across
hosts in a resource pool, and CD images may fail to attach if the contents are modified.
To use local ISO storage from the control domain
1. Log onto the host console.
2. Create a directory to copy the local ISOs into:
mkdir -p /var/opt/xen/iso_import
3. Create an ISO storage repository: