The purpose of the following guide will be to provide a simple step by step guide on how to install RedHat Enterprise Linux 7.1 over an Oracle VirtualBox VM.
You will need to meet the following pre requisites before you can folow this guide.
- Oracle VirtualBox should be installed on your system.
- All three RedHat 7.1 DVDs should be downloaded on to your system.
- Your system should have at least 1,5GB of disk space and 512MB of spare RAM.
If the above items are met proceed with the next steps.
- Open VirtualBox and hit the "New" button.
A dialog will pop out with a few options.
- Go ahead and type RHEL on "Name:" and "Type:" and "Version:" should fill in appropriately.
- Hit "Next" and select the amount of RAM. I would suggest no less than 1GB.
- Hit "Next" to proceed to the Hard Drive selection.
Unless you have specific needs the defaults should be enough. Please note that size specified (8GB default) is not the actual size that the Virtual Disk will use on your system. VirtualBox disks grow dynamically according to the VM needs and the size provided is the maximum space it can reach. - Hit "Next" and proceed to the Hard Drive type. Again, unless you have special needs the default should cover your needs.
- Hit "Next" to select the space allocation policy. Using Virtual Disks there is no real benefit on using fixed size, going for the default "Dynamically allocated" option should be the best for most cases.
- On the Next dialog screen I would suggest changing the disk name to something representative, such as RHEL_WEBSERVER_OS. For this example I will just name it OS. The rest of the options can be left unchanged.
- Hit the "Create" button and your VM should appear on the left hand side panel of you VirtualBox manager.
Before you can proceed with the RHEL installation you have to add the installation media to the VM.
- Click on the "Storage" section. A dialog will appear and you will see an "Empty" DVD drive, left click on that drive and go to the far right and click on the DVD icon and select the option "Choose a virtual CD/DVD disk file" to select an ISO image.
Browse your system to select the RHEL Boot DVD (rhel-server-7.1-x86_64-boot.iso).
At this point your storage options should look like this: - You now have the Boot DVD as default boot media on the VM, but the two remaining ISO images need to be added for the installation to work.
Click on the + DVD icon highlighted on the picture above, then click on the "Choose Disk" option and browse your system for the second RHEL DVD ISO image (rhel-server-7.1-x86_64-dvd.iso). Click "Open" and repeat this process for the third and last ISO image (supp-server-7.1-rhel-7-x86_64-dvd.iso). The third and last image is not needed for a standard installation, but it is recommended to add it in case extra software is selected.
The Storage section of your VM should now look like this: - You can now select your VM from your left panel and hit the "Start" button to boot the VM and start the installation.
The VM should boot into the first Boot DVD and the installation from here on should be straight forward as any regular HREL install.
NOTE: To follow up on the RHEL 7.1 installation follow this link: Installing RHEL 7.1 (Maipo) on Oracle VM VirtualBox - Part 2
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