[Users] How to See Ovirt Console From a Remote Windows Host

[Jon Forrest]

I know that this is simple for some of you, but I also
know from Googling around that lots of people have had
trouble seeing their ovirt console from a remote Windows
host. Below I describe what finally worked for me. I hope
this helps somebody avoid wasting as much time as I did
today.

I'm a fairly experienced VMWare user who's learning ovirt.
I just installed an all-in-one ovirt server and copied a
CentOS 6.5 iso into it. I then tried to boot a new VM
but soon learned that console access is different in ovirt
than on VMWare.

I then spent over an hour trying the various documented
ways to view a remote console using Spice on my Windows 7
desktop. I even tried using a Linux VM to see if the Firefox
plugin for Spice would work. Nothing.

What finally worked was installing the virt-viewer Windows
client (http://virt-manager.org/download/). Then, I opened
the ovirt Administration Portal in Firefox running on my
Windows 7 desktop. I created a new VM and configured it
the way I wanted. Then, from the "Virtual Machines" tab, I started
the new VM. Pretty soon the little console icon turned green so
I clicked on it. I got the prompt from Firefox asking me what
app I wanted to associate with the ".vv" URL that opened when
I clicked on the console icon. I browsed around and selected

\Program Files\VirtViewer\bin\remote-viewer.exe

which is from the virt-viewer client package I installed above.
I told Firefox to always use this app for this kind of file.

This works great! I was able to boot the CentOS system and
install it with no problems.

Good luck!
Jon Forrest