Setting up RedHat Virtio Drivers for Windows Guest on KVM

Installing VirtIO  Block drivers on Windows Guest System Boot disk on KVM

 Virt IO block driver can be used either as a system (boot) or non-system disk. In this section we are going to see how to attach virtio disk for system boot disk new  windows 2008 virtual machine we are going to create on top of RHEL6 KVM Host.

 Install the RHEL6 and select Only "Virtual Host" during the Package Selection during the Installation it will  install all the necessary kvm packages to create and manage virtual machines

 Then Register the host With RHN Satellite and subscribe to  RHEL Server Supplementary  Child channel and install the virtio-win using yum.

# yum install virtio-win

or

Even you can download the  virtio-win-1.1.16-0.el6.noarch and install it manually  on the host .

 Once you installed you will find all the drivers under /usr/share/virtio-win/ diretcory and you can check it using the simple rpm comand line by typing .

rpm -ql virtio-win-1.1.16-0.el6.noarch.

# ls /usr/share/virtio-win/
drivers/               virtio-win-1.1.16.vfd  virtio-win.vfd
virtio-win-1.1.16.iso  virtio-win.iso

You can Now attach this file virtio-win.iso using cdrom to the windows guest using virt-manager to install either disk or network virt drivers  after the Operating syste installation.

If you want to make your system boot disk to use virtio then you are suppose to use virtio-win-1.1.16.vfd file as a floopy drive and proceed the installation . Installing the tools after the Operating system installation is very straight forward we will see how to use  virtual floppy  drive to load the virtio disk driver during the windows guest installation .

Start the Virt-manager from  the command line or from system tools  .

Create a new virtual machine lets call its as win2k8R2 and Select Media as per you Local Infrastructure , We are using an Local ISO Install image and Select Forward.

 

Browse the Local ISO Image and Select the Os type to Windows and Version to Microsoft Windows 2008

Select the Memory and Cpu as per your requirement and Click Forward

Select the Required Storage Disk size for your Virtual Machine

You can Expand the Advanced Button to change the Network and MAC Settings and Select "Customize Configuration Before Install " on the final screen and Click Finish.

Click on Add Hardware-->Select Storage-->Forward-->Select Managed or Existing Storage-->Browse for the /usr/share/virtio-win/virtio-win-1.1.16.vfd and Change the Device Type to Floppy Disk and Leave Cache Mode to default and Finish.

Now Remove the IDE  disk we attached during the Virtual machine creation 

Add the New storage Disk by selecting Add Hardware and give the disk size and select Device Type to  virtio Disk instead of IDE.

Now we have virtual Floppy disk attached and even we added a New Virtio disk for  windows guest system boot disk .Now it time to close the custom windows , Once you close it your new windows guest installation screen will Pop Up .

 Follow the On screen Instruction of windows installation , after you select the Custom Install you will get a below screen to Load drivers for the Virtio Disk .Now Select Load Drivers-->Browse or Rescan , you will find all the drivers attached from the virtual floppy for this windows guest.

Select Red Hat Virtio for Scsi Controller for windows 2008 and Click Next , then you Proceed your windows guest  installation as per on screen instruction.