Драйверы VirtIO для виртуальной машины Windows. KVM, CentOS

Что делать, если Windows не видит диск KVM VirtIO? Драйверы VirtIO для KVM дадут возможность создавать более быстрые виртуальные сетевые адаптеры, подключать диски типа virtio к VM. Можно и без них, но зачем делать хуже, если можно лучше? На примере виртуальной машины Windows 7, устанавливаемой на хост KVM (CentOS 7), посмотрим, как подключить такие драйверы при установке гостевой операционной системы.

Была создана виртуальная машина Windows 7:

Подключаюсь к консоли TightVNC, начинаю установку — установщик не видит диск.

Тип диска был указан virtio. Нужно подсунуть этот драйвер установщику.

# wget https://fedorapeople.org/groups/virt/virtio-win/virtio-win.repo -O /etc/yum.repos.d/virtio-win.repo
# yum install virtio-win

Подключаю к VM диск с драйверами:

# virsh attach-disk vm1 /usr/share/virtio-win/virtio-win-0.1.141.iso hda —type cdrom —mode readonly
Disk attached successfully

Теперь выбираем драйвер:

Подключаем снова установочный диск:

# virsh attach-disk vm1 /data/vms-iso/Windows-7-64-prof-from-orig-dvd.iso hda —type cdrom —mode readonly
Disk attached successfully

и продолжаем установку Windows 7.

Аналогичным способом диск с драйверами подключается после установки, для устройств типа сетевых карт и др.

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Installing Virtio Drivers In Windows On KVM

3rd July 2018

Virtio drivers are paravirtualized device drivers for KVM virtual machines.

Paravirtualized drivers enhance the performance of machines, decreasing I/O latency and increasing throughput to near bare-metal levels.

It is recommended to use the paravirtualized drivers for fully virtualized machines.

Most Linux distributions include the virtio drivers as standard. This guide explains how to install them in Windows.

This guide was written for Zetastack users but applies to any Windows guest VM running on a KVM host.

This includes Nutanix, Red Hat Virtualization (RHEV), Proxmox VE, oVirt and OpenStack.

If your device manager looks like this, then this guide will help you.

Download ISO

We recommend the stable release, the same as what is shipped with Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

This is the link to download:

Download and add the ISO to your virtualization platform.

In Zetastack this is done in Settings Import.

Machine Configuration

Edit the machine configuration and set these:

• Disk bus: Virtio SCSI pass-through controller
• NIC model: Virtio Ethernet
• Video model: QXL
• Video RAM: 32MB

Attach ISO

This bit depends on whether you are installing a new Windows VM or you already have an existing Windows VM.

If you are installing a new Windows VM, set the ISO to be the 2nd CD-ROM drive leaving the Windows install ISO as the 1st CD-ROM drive.

Begin Install

If you are not installing a new Windows VM, you can skip this section.

Storage Driver

At the disk detection stage, the Windows installer cannot detect any disks for installation.

This is expected behaviour, since the virtio drivers have not been loaded yet and are not included by Microsoft in the installation media.

Click «Load driver» and select «CD Drive (E:) virtio-win-0.1.1»

The driver required is the «VirtIO SCSI pass-through controller» located at:

For other editions of Windows, the driver will be located in the relevant directory on the ISO.

Select the driver and click «Next».

The driver is loaded and the and the disk is now detected.

Select the disk for installation and click «Next».

Post Install

Once the installation is complete and the VM has booted, the next steps are to install the guest agent and resolve any missing drivers.

Guest Agent

It is essential the guest agent is installed.

The guest agent is used by the hypervisor to communicate directly with the VM.

The guest agent is required for clean VM shutdown and to enable live snapshots of the VM images.

On the task bar click «File Explorer».

Select «This PC» then double click «CD Drive (E:) virtio-win-0.1.1».

Open the «guest-agent» folder.

Right click the «qemu-ga-x64» file and select «Install».

The QEMU guest agent will now install.

Once installed the VM must be completely shutdown before the agent can run.

When the VM is started again, the guest agent service will automatically start.

Device Manager

In Device Manager we can see the following unconfigured devices.

This table lists the devices and the drivers required.

Device	Driver
Storage controller	Virtio SCSI pass-through controller (already installed)
Ethernet controller	Virtio Ethernet adapter
PCI device	Virtio balloon driver
PCI input device	Virtio input driver
PCI simple communications controller	Virtio serial driver
Display adapter	QXL video driver
HID button over interrupt driver	Generic bus

The procedure is simple but repetitive.

Generic Bus

This is a Microsoft bug which is easily resolved.

Right click on «HID Button over Interrupt Driver» and select «Update Driver Software. «

Select «Browse my computer for driver software».

Select «Let me pick from a list of device drivers on my computer».

Select the model «Generic Bus».

This resolves the bug, and removes the driver warning.

Virtio Ethernet Adapter

This is a high speed driver capable of 10GbE and better.

Right click on «Ethernet Controller» and select «Update Driver Software. «.

Select «Browse my computer for driver software».

Select «CD Drive (E:) virtio-win-0.1.1» and click OK.

Device Manager will automatically find the correct driver. The path to the driver does not need to be specified.

At the prompt click «Install».

The driver is installed.

The device description has now changed in Device Manager.

Virtio Balloon Driver

The balloon driver allows the memory in the VM to be changed dynamically.

Right click on «PCI Device» and select «Update Driver Software. «.

Follow the same steps for the Ethernet adapter above to complete the driver installation.

Virtio Input Driver

This provides accurate mouse tracking within the console.

Right click on «PCI Input Device» and select «Update Driver Software. «.

Follow the same steps for the Ethernet adapter above to complete the driver installation.

Virtio Serial Driver

This is a virtual serial port for communication between the hypervisor and the VM.

Right click on «PCI Simple Communications Controller» and select «Update Driver Software. «.

Follow the same steps for the Ethernet adapter above to complete the driver installation.

QXL Video Driver

This is a video driver that improves performance and allows for higher resolutions.

It also provides a seamless cursor when using the console to manage the VM.

Right click on «Microsoft Basic Display Adapter» and select «Update Driver Software. «.

Follow the same steps for the Ethernet adapter above to complete the driver installation.

Cursor Tweak

When using the QXL driver, the mouse cursor needs to be tweaked.

This will provide a seamless cursor in web based VM consoles.

On the start menu click «Settings».

Click «Mouse & touchpad».

Click «Additional mouse options».

In the Pointers tab, enable «Enable pointer shadow» and click OK to update.

This allows the use of black and extra large cursors.

Windows VirtIO Drivers

Contents

Introduction

VirtIO Drivers are paravirtualized drivers for kvm/Linux (see http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Virtio). In short, they enable direct (paravirtualized) access to devices and peripherals for virtual machines using them, instead of slower, emulated, ones.
A quite extended explanation about VirtIO drivers can be found here http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/library/l-virtio.

At the moment these kind of devices are supported:

You can maximize performances by using VirtIO drivers. The availability and status of the VirtIO drivers depends on the guest OS and platform.

Windows OS Support

Windows does not have native support for VirtIO devices included. But, there is excellent external support through opensource drivers, which are available compiled and signed for Windows:

Note that this repository provides not only the most recent, but also many older versions. Those older versions can still be useful when a Windows VM shows instability or incompatibility with a newer driver version.

The binary drivers are digitally signed by Red Hat, and will work on 32-bit and 64-bit versions of Windows

Installation

Using the ISO

You can download the latest stable or you can download the most recent build of the ISO. Normally the drivers are pretty stable, so one should try out the most recent release first.

You can access the ISO can in a VM by mounting the ISO with a virtual CD-ROM/DVD drive on that VM.

Wizard Installation

You can use an easy wizard to install all, or a selection, of VirtIO drivers.

1. Open the Windows Explorer and navigate to the CD-ROM drive.
2. Simply execute (double-click on) virtio-win-gt-x64
3. Follow its instructions.
4. (Optional) use the virtio-win-guest-tools wizard to install the QEMU Guest Agent and the SPICE agent for an improved remote-viewer experience.
5. Reboot VM

Manual Installation

1. Open the Windows Explorer and navigate to the CD-ROM drive. There you can see that the ISO consists of several directories, each having sub-directories for supported OS version (for example, 2k19, 2k12R2, w7, w8.1, w10, . ).
   • Balloon
   • guest-agent
   • NetKVM
   • qxl
   • vioscsi
   • .

Downloading the Wizard in the VM

You can also just download the most recent virtio-win-gt-x64.msi or virtio-win-gt-x86.msi from inside the VM, if you have already network access.

Then just execute it and follow the installation process.