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Chapter 4. Creating Windows VMs
Warning:
Running a VM without installing the XenServer Tools is not a supported configuration. For
more information, see Section 2.3, “XenServer Tools”.
Installing Windows VMs on a XenServer host requires hardware virtualization support (Intel VT or AMD-V).

4.1. Basic Procedure for Creating a Windows VM

The process of installing a Windows on to a VM can be broken down into three steps:
• selecting the appropriate Windows template
• installing the Windows operating system
• installing the paravirtualized device drivers known as the XenServer Tools

4.2. Available Windows Templates

Windows operating systems are installed onto VMs by cloning an appropriate template using either XenCenter or
the xe CLI, and then installing the operating system. The templates for individual guests have predefined platform
flags set which define the configuration of the virtual hardware. For example, all Windows VMs are installed with
the ACPI Hardware Abstraction Layer (HAL) mode enabled. If you subsequently change one of these VMs to have
multiple virtual CPUs, Windows automatically switches the HAL to multi-processor mode.
The available Windows templates are listed below:
Template Name Description
Citrix XenApp on Windows Server 2003
(32-bit)
Used to install Windows Server 2003 SP2 (32-bit). The Server,
Enterprise, Data Centre, and SBS editions are supported. This
template is specially tuned to optimize XenApp performance.
Citrix XenApp on Windows Server 2003
(64-bit)
Used to install Windows Server 2003 SP2 (64-bit). The Server,
Enterprise, Data Centre, and SBS editions are supported. This
template is specially tuned to optimize XenApp performance.
Citrix XenApp on Windows Server 2008
(32-bit)
Used to install Windows Server 2008 SP2 (32-bit). All editions are
supported. This template is specially tuned to optimize XenApp
performance.
Citrix XenApp on Windows Server 2008
(64-bit)
Used to install Windows Server 2008 SP2 (64-bit). All editions are
supported. This template is specially tuned to optimize XenApp
performance.
Citrix XenApp on Windows Server 2008
R2 (64-bit)
Used to install Windows Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server
2008 R2 SP1 (64-bit). All editions are supported. This template is
specially tuned to optimize XenApp performance.
Windows 7 (32-bit) Used to install Windows 7 and Windows 7 SP1 (32-bit).
Windows 7 (64-bit) Used to install Windows 7 and Windows 7 SP1 (64-bit).
Windows 8 (32-bit) Used to install Windows 8 (32-bit).
Windows 8 (64-bit) Used to install Windows 8 (64-bit).