1. What is virtual machine?
Virtual Machine is a computer system emulator program. They operate based on the architecture and hardware components of the physical machine.
Virtual machines provide a perfect alternative solution to physical machines. In some cases, using a virtual machine will bring better performance than the physical machine. For example, software testing, trying out new operating systems, dealing with malware, etc.
In the curriculum, the use of virtual machines will be very suitable for students’ practical operations to avoid affecting the physical machine.
There are many softwares to create virtual machines on a physical computer such as VMware Workstation, VM VirtualBox, Windows Virtual PC, etc.
2. Steps to create a virtual machine with VMware Workstation software
First, you need to download and install VMware Workstation software on your computer. Then, start the VMware Workstation program.
Go to File -> New Virtual Machine to initialize a new virtual machine.
Select Typical to create the default virtual machine, Custom allows to configure virtual machine.
Choose the appropriate hardware for the virtual machine to be created.
Select the operating system to install with the following options:
- Install the operating system from your computer’s physical drive (CD-ROM)
- Install operating system via virtual disk file (*.iso)
- Enable virtual machine initialization before operating system installation
Select the operating system to use for the virtual machine to be created.
Set name and folder to store the virtual machine (students keep this in mind).
Select firmware type with BIOS or UEFI.
Configure the processor for the virtual machine (the number of processors, the number of cores per processor).
Determine the appropriate capacity for RAM memory of the virtual machine. You can use the slider or enter the capacity directly.
Select the network connection configuration setting that suits your virtual machine creation needs.
Choose the disk type.
Select a disk you want to use.
Specify disk capacity with different creation options.
Successful virtual machine creation.
3. Configure BIOS timeout and Boot mode in BIOS
3.1. Configure BIOS timeout of virtual machine
Go to the directory where the virtual machine is stored -> select the file that stores the virtual machine configuration [name_virtual_machine].vmx (VMware Virtual Machine Configuration File) -> Edit with Notepad++.
Add the configuration line bios.bootdelay=<value>, the value in milliseconds is the time to wait before starting the operating system.
Start the virtual machine, there will be a timeout to enter the BIOS.
3.2. Configure Boot mode in BIOS
Enter the BIOS program (refer to the article Features of BIOS program and BIOS configurations). Then, select the Boot tab, adjust the order of priority to load data from CD-ROM or HDD or USB. Use the up and down arrow keys (↑↓) to select lines, plus and minus (+/-) change the priority order.
Press the F10 key to save the selected Boot mode and exit the BIOS.
4. Requirement of practice
Students create a virtual machine with the name formatted as Student ID with the following configuration parameters:
- Operating system: Windows 10
- RAM capacity: 2048 MB
- HDD capacity: 100 GB
- Processor: 1 CPU – 2 cores
- BIOS timeout: 10 seconds
- Choose boot device: CD-ROM
