Create a Virtual Machine with the New Virtual Machine Wizard

You can create a single virtual machine if no virtual machines in your environment meet your needs, for example of a particular operating system or hardware configuration. When you create a virtual machine without a template or clone, you can configure the virtual hardware, including processors, hard disks, and memory. You open the New Virtual Machine wizard from any object in the inventory that is a valid parent object of a virtual machine.

During the creation process, a default disk is configured for the virtual machine. You can remove this disk and add a new hard disk, select an existing disk, or add an RDM disk on the Virtual Hardware page of the wizard.

Prerequisites

Verify that you have the following privileges:

Virtual machine .Inventory.Create new on the destination folder or data center.
Virtual machine.Configuration.Add new disk on the destination folder or data center, if you are adding a new disk.
Virtual machine.Configuration.Add existing disk on the destination folder or data center, if you are adding an existing disk.
Virtual machine.Configuration.Configure Raw device on the destination folder or data center, if you are using an RDM or SCSI pass-through device.
Virtual machine.Configuration.Configure Host USB device on the destination folder or data center, if you are attaching a virtual USB device backed by a host USB device.
Virtual machine.Configuration.Advanced configuration on the destination folder or data center, if you are configuring advanced virtual machine settings.
Virtual machine.Configuration.Change Swapfile placement on the destination folder or data center, if you are configuring swap file placement.
Virtual machine.Configuration.Toggle disk change tracking on the destination folder or data center, if you are enabling change tracking on the virtual machine's disks.
Resource.Assign virtual machine to resource pool on the destination host, cluster, or resource pool.
Datastore.Allocate space on the destination datastore or datastore folder.
Network.Assign network on the network that the virtual machine will be assigned to.

To verify the privileges assigned to your role, click Menu > Administration > Roles and select the role.

Procedure

Right-click any inventory object that is a valid parent object of a virtual machine, such as a data center, folder, cluster, resource pool, or host, and select New Virtual Machine.
On the Select a creation type page, select Create a new virtual machine and click Next.
On the Select a name and folder page, enter a unique name for the virtual machine and select a deployment location.
On the Select a compute resource page, select the host, cluster, resource pool, or vApp where the virtual machine will run and click Next.
If creating the virtual machine at the selected location causes compatibility problems, an alarm appears in the Compatibility pane.
Note: If you want to create a virtual machine that uses persistent memory, choose a host or a cluster with available PMem resource.

On the Select storage page, choose the storage type, the storage policy, and a datastore or datastore cluster where to store the virtual machine files.

Option	Description
Create a virtual machine on a host that has PMem resource	Choose the type of storage by selecting the Standard or the PMem radio button. With the PMem storage option, every virtual machine disk file is stored on the host-local PMem datastore by default. You can change the datastore at a later time. The virtual machine home location must be on a non-PMem datastore. For more information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management guide. (Optional) From the VM Storage Policy drop-down menu, select a virtual machine storage policy or leave the default one. (Optional) Select the Encrypt this virtual machine check box to encrypt the virtual machine. Select a datastore or a datastore cluster. Select the Disable Storage DRS for this virtual machine check box if you do not want to use storage DRS with the virtual machine.
Create a virtual machine on a host that does not have PMem resource	Select a VM storage policy or leave the default one. (Optional) Select the Encrypt this virtual machine check box to encrypt the virtual machine. Select a datastore or a datastore cluster.

Option

Description

Create a virtual machine on a host that has PMem resource

Choose the type of storage by selecting the Standard or the PMem radio button.
With the PMem storage option, every virtual machine disk file is stored on the host-local PMem datastore by default. You can change the datastore at a later time. The virtual machine home location must be on a non-PMem datastore.

For more information about persistent memory and PMem storage, see the vSphere Resource Management guide.
(Optional) From the VM Storage Policy drop-down menu, select a virtual machine storage policy or leave the default one.
(Optional) Select the Encrypt this virtual machine check box to encrypt the virtual machine.
Select a datastore or a datastore cluster.
Select the Disable Storage DRS for this virtual machine check box if you do not want to use storage DRS with the virtual machine.

Create a virtual machine on a host that does not have PMem resource

Select a VM storage policy or leave the default one.
(Optional) Select the Encrypt this virtual machine check box to encrypt the virtual machine.
Select a datastore or a datastore cluster.

Important: For information about creating an encrypted virtual machine, see vSphere Security.

On the Select compatibility page, select the virtual machine compatibility with ESXi host versions and click Next.

Note: Select the latest compatibility if you want to have access to the latest hardware features.
On the Select a guest OS page, select the guest OS family and version and click Next.
When you select a guest operating system, BIOS or Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) is selected by default, depending on the firmware supported by the operating system. Mac OS X Server guest operating systems support only EFI. If the operating system supports BIOS and EFI, you can change the default from the VM Options tab of the Edit Settings dialog after you create the virtual machine and before you install the guest operating system. If you select EFI, you cannot boot an operating system that supports only BIOS, and the reverse.
Important: Do not change the firmware after the guest operating system is installed. The guest operating system installer partitions the disk in a particular format, depending on which firmware the installer was booted from. If you change the firmware, you will not be able to boot the guest.
(Optional) Enable Windows Virtualization Based Security.
The Enable Windows Virtualization Based Security option is available for the latest Windows OS versions, for example Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016. For more information about VBS, see the vSphere Security documentation.
On the Customize hardware page, configure the virtual machine hardware and options and click Next.
You can leave the defaults and configure the virtual machine hardware and options later. For more information, see Configuring Virtual Machine Hardware and Configuring Virtual Machine Options.
Important: If you chose to use PMem storage for the virtual machine, its default hard disk, the new hard disks that you configure, and the NVDIMM devices that you add to the virtual machine all share the same PMem resources. So, you must adjust the size of the newly added devices in accordance with the amount of the PMem available to the host. If any part of the configuration requires attention, the wizard alerts you.
On the Ready to complete page, review the details and click Finish.

Results

The virtual machine appears in the vSphere Client inventory.