You can create a Windows virtual machine (VM) in vSphere from scratch or by cloning an existing VM. This page describes creating a VM from scratch.

Prerequisites

Familiarize yourself with the custom configuration parameters for virtual machines. See Virtual Machine Custom Configuration Parameters.

Procedure

  1. Log in to vSphere Client.
  2. Right-click any inventory object that is a valid main object of a virtual machine, such as a data center, folder, cluster, resource pool, or host, and select New Virtual Machine.
  3. Select Create a new virtual machine and click Next.
  4. Follow the prompts to specify the virtual machine custom options.
  5. On the Customize hardware page, select Virtual Hardware to configure hardware settings.
    1. Click Add New Device and select a CD/DVD drive, set the media type to use an ISO image file, select the ISO image file of an appropriate operating system, and select Connect at power on.
  6. On the Customize hardware page, select VM Options to configure virtual machine settings.
    1. (Optional) In the Boot Options, set Boot Delay to 10,000 milliseconds.

      You can set the boot delay to easily access the virtual machine's BIOS on boot and modify the system settings. After you modify the system settings, you can reboot the boot delay.

  7. Click Finish to create the virtual machine.
  8. Proceed to install the operating system.

Virtual Machine Custom Configuration Parameters

You can use virtual machine custom configuration parameters as baseline settings when you create a virtual machine for remote desktop deployment.

Table 1. Custom Configuration Parameters
Parameter Description and Recommendations
Name and Folder

The name and location of the virtual machine.

If you plan to use the virtual machine as a template, assign a generic name. The location can be any folder within your datacenter inventory.

Host/Cluster

The ESXi server or cluster of server resources that will run the virtual machine.

If you plan to use the virtual machine as a template, the location of the initial virtual machine does not necessarily specify where future virtual machines created from template will reside.

Resource Pool

If the physical ESXi server resources are divided into resource pools, you can assign them to the virtual machine.

Datastore The location of files associated with the virtual machine.
Hardware Machine Version

The hardware machine version that is available depends on the ESXi version you are running. As a best practice, select the latest available hardware machine version, which provides the greatest virtual machine functionality. Certain VMware Horizon 8 features require minimum hardware machine versions.

Guest Operating System The type of operating system that you will install in the virtual machine.
CPUs

The number of virtual processors in the virtual machine.

Memory

The amount of memory to allocate to the virtual machine.

Network

The number of virtual network adapters (NICs) in the virtual machine.

One NIC is usually sufficient. The network name should be consistent across virtual infrastructures. An incorrect network name in a template can cause failures during the instance customization phases.

When you install Horizon Agent on a virtual machine that has more than one NIC, you must configure the subnet that Horizon Agent uses. See Configure a Virtual Machine with Multiple NICs for Horizon Agent for more information.

Important: For Windows, you must use the VMXNET 3 network adapter.
SCSI Controller The type of SCSI adapter to use with the virtual machine. Select either LSI Logic SAS or VMware Paravirtual (PVSCSI).

Using PVSCSI may require additional steps depending on the version of Windows to be installed. For more information, see the VMware Knowledge Base article Configuring disks to use VMware Paravirtual SCSI (PVSCSI) controllers (1010398).
Select a Disk

The disk to use with the virtual machine.

Create a new virtual disk based on the amount of local storage that you decide to allocate to each user. Allow enough storage space for the OS installation, patches, and locally installed applications.

To reduce the need for disk space and management of local data, you should store the user's information, profile, and documents on network shares rather than on a local disk.