Hello:
I am wondering if KVM is ready for production for running a Windows Server 2003 32 bit guest.
According to the RHEL 5.4 virtualization guide, there is supposed to be a virtio-win yum package, but that was not released. Instead, it looks like that is only available for RHN subscribers.
Also, I saw this posting on the CentOS list:
--- Quoted from CL Martinez There are freely redistributable, but still they aren't published by upstream. You can use these instead: http://www.linux-kvm.com/content/windows-binary-virtio-drivers-finally-relea sed, but there are a lot of problems with any windows 64 bits. And another problem, a big really, is that you can¡t install a windows kvm guest directly to a virtio disk. First you need to install to an ide disk, after generate a virtio disk and attach to win guest, install the virtio driver and last remove ide drive ... very very ugly. ---- End Quote
That seems to imply things are still not ready for production use.
Any opinions?
Thanks, Neil
-- Neil Aggarwal, (281)846-8957, http://UnmeteredVPS.net CentOS 5.4 VPS with unmetered bandwidth only $25/month! No overage charges, 7 day free trial, Google Checkout accepted
2009/12/2 Neil Aggarwal neil@jammconsulting.com:
I am wondering if KVM is ready for production for running a Windows Server 2003 32 bit guest.
Well, it probably depends on who you ask... :) With the current qemu-kvm branch, I would say yes. I've been running a (non-critical) Windows Server 2003 32bit in a production environment with Fedora 8, Fedora 9 and now Fedora 11. A Windows 2008 Server 64bit guest also joined in at Fedora 9. Back in the Fedora 8 and 9 days, I experienced some issues, but they're all resolved now in Fedora 11 (and hopefully also in Fedora 12). Since they're running perfectly fine now, I'm not in a hurry moving to CentOS 5.4 for a more overall stable platform. Instead I'm waiting for CentOS 6.0 to arrive next year, in which the Xen support will be dropped and KVM will be the primary virtualization solution. I have no issues of reaching uptimes of 90 days+ for the two Windows servers or the three Linux guests with my current Fedora 11 installation (if I skip the updates requiring a restart).
According to the RHEL 5.4 virtualization guide, there is supposed to be a virtio-win yum package, but that was not released. Instead, it looks like that is only available for RHN subscribers.
Yep, it was actually released yesterday to the Red Hat Supplementary repository: http://rhn.redhat.com/errata/RHEA-2009-1624.html
I guess Red Hat has copyrighted their binary version, since they put it in the Supplementary repository. As I couldn't figure out if packages (especially virtio-win) from the supplementary repository sometimes find their way into CentOS, so I created a question about it in the forums earlier today: https://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=23588&forum=...
--- Quoted from CL Martinez There are freely redistributable, but still they aren't published by upstream. You can use these instead: http://www.linux-kvm.com/content/windows-binary-virtio-drivers-finally-relea sed, but there are a lot of problems with any windows 64 bits. And another problem, a big really, is that you can¡t install a windows kvm guest directly to a virtio disk. First you need to install to an ide disk, after generate a virtio disk and attach to win guest, install the virtio driver and last remove ide drive ... very very ugly. ---- End Quote
Well, the drivers works just fine for 64 bit guests, but they're tricky to install in their current form, since they _NEED_ to be signed correctly...if you sign them yourself, you'll need to enable test mode in Windows, which indeed is just as ugly as the "add a secondary harddisk to install the virtio drivers" fix. This is exactly why we need the virt-win package, which apparently both contain an iso with *.msi files for installing the drivers within Windows, as well as a floppy image for installation of drivers during the installation of Windows.
The ugly part is the installation of unsigned VirtIO block device drivers...if you can live with e1000 NIC emulation (close to same performance, but a bit higher CPU utillization) and IDE emulation, then you shouldn't have any stability issues and no "ugly hacks". Performance should still be fairly good.
You you, like me, don't mind a bit of hacking on the initial installation of a Windows Server, running with NIC and block VirtIO drivers should be just as stable (today I'm running VirtIO on all my Windows and Linux systems).
Best Regards Kenni Lund
2009/12/2 Kenni Lund kenni@kelu.dk:
2009/12/2 Neil Aggarwal neil@jammconsulting.com:
I am wondering if KVM is ready for production for running a Windows Server 2003 32 bit guest.
<SNIP>
Well, the drivers works just fine for 64 bit guests, but they're tricky to install in their current form, since they _NEED_ to be signed correctly...if you sign them yourself, you'll need to enable test mode in Windows, which indeed is just as ugly as the "add a secondary harddisk to install the virtio drivers" fix. This is exactly why we need the virt-win package, which apparently both contain an iso with *.msi files for installing the drivers within Windows, as well as a floppy image for installation of drivers during the installation of Windows.
The ugly part is the installation of unsigned VirtIO block device drivers...if you can live with e1000 NIC emulation (close to same performance, but a bit higher CPU utillization) and IDE emulation, then you shouldn't have any stability issues and no "ugly hacks". Performance should still be fairly good.
Just replying myself now :) If you want to test out the "production readiness"/stability of KVM with VirtIO without going through all the selfsigning stuff and manually copying the files back and forth from your virtual machines, feel free to use the following iso, which I created for my own use. It contains the latest binary drivers from http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/WindowsGuestDrivers/Download_Drivers, which afterwards have been self-signed with a test certificate, put into directories matching the names of the compatible Windows versions and compiled into an iso, which makes it easy to install, since you can just mount it directly into your virtual KVM machine. In order to test it on a Windows 2003 Server 32bit you don't need to enable any testsigning mode, you should just do the following: - Install Windows 2003 without any VirtIO devices - Shut it down -- Add a secondary HDD which uses the VirtIO interface -- Change the NIC to use the VirtIO interface -- Mount the iso as a cdrom in the virtual machine - Boot the system and point it towards the block and NIC drivers on the CD - Shut down the virtual machine - Remove the secondary HDD and change the primary to use VirtIO instead of IDE - Done
I've uploaded the iso here, in case you want to try it out: http://www.student.dtu.dk/~kllu/VirtIO_24-09-2009.iso
Best Regards Kenni Lund
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Kenni Lund -
Neil Aggarwal