Configure Host for UEFI

Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) is a standard firmware designed to replace BIOS. By default, a VM boots in BIOS mode.

Private Cloud Director has experimental support for UEFI based VM booting on the following host operating systems.

  • Ubuntu 22.04

  • CentOS 7.4 and higher

UEFI facilitates faster boot, supports larger hard drives, and has more security features as compared to the traditional BIOS.

You can configure an authorized host or hypervisor to boot in UEFI mode.

Open Virtual Machine Firmware (OVMF) is a project to enable UEFI support for virtual machines. OVMF must be installed on your host to enable UEFI mode booting for virtual machines.

The following sections explain how to install OVMF on CentOS and Ubuntu. Refer to the respective section based on your host operating system, verify UEFI installation on your VM, and configure images to boot with UEFI.

Install OVMF on Host running CentOS

1

Install repository file

cd _etc_yum.repos.d_ && wget http:__www.kraxel.org_repos_firmware.repo
2

Install OVMF package (64-bit)

su -c 'yum install edk2.git-ovmf-x64 -y'
3

Create OVMF directory and copy firmware files

mkdir -p _usr_share_OVMF_
cp _usr_share_edk2.git_ovmf-x64_OVMF_CODE-pure-efi.fd _usr_share_OVMF_OVMF_CODE.fd
cp _usr_share_edk2.git_ovmf-x64_OVMF_VARS-pure-efi.fd _usr_share_OVMF_OVMF_VARS.fd

Install OVMF on Host running Ubuntu

Run the following command to install OVMF on Ubuntu.

apt-get install ovmf

Verify that your Virtual Machine is booted in UEFI mode

Look for the /sys/firmware/efi folder on your virtual machine (VM). The folder would be missing if your VM is using BIOS.

Alternatively, install the efibootmgr package and check if your VM has been booted with UEFI.

If your VM is booted with UEFI, the output of the sudo efibootmgr command shows different EFI variables.

If your VM does not support UEFI, a message is displayed in the output of the sudo efibootmgr command indicating that EFI variables are not supported.

Configure Image to Boot using UEFI

Add hw_firmware_type image metadata to the UEFI image to specify UEFI as the firmware type used to boot the VM.

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