Installation Guide #

SUSE Linux Enterprise Virtual Machine Driver Pack contains Windows* disk and network device drivers to enable the high-performance hosting of these unmodified guest operating systems on top of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. Paravirtualized drivers for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server are available, but not included in this Driver Pack. Paravirtualized drivers for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server are distributed under an open source license. They are included in both physical and electronic media of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server and corresponding SUSE Customer Center update channels.

SLE-VMDP has been certified by Microsoft: http://www.windowsservercatalog.com/item.aspx?idItem=979ea66f-7f52-a04c-df5b-88ecc4dfa5b0&bCatID=1282

The SUSE Linux Enterprise Virtual Machine Driver Pack is available at https://www.suse.com/download/suse-vmdp/ for download as one binary file - a Windows self-extracting ZIP file (.exe extension). There is also an ISO image (.iso) for Windows* 2008 and newer that may be used for VMs running on KVM.

3.3 Additional KVM VirtIO setup instructions #

Setup.exe can be run with and without VirtIO devices present in the VM. If the devices are present in the VM when setup is run, the drivers are installed and loaded at that time. If the VirtIO devices are not present when setup is run, shut down the VM, add the VirtIO devices, and start the VM. After booting, Windows* will discover the new devices and load the previously installed drivers.

To boot a running VM on a VirtIO disk, the VirtIO disk driver must be installed on a secondary/temporary (e:) VirtIO disk. After the driver is installed and controlling the disk, shut down the VM. From virt-manager, delete the secondary VirtIO disk and delete the IDE boot disk. Now add a disk of type VirtIO or VirtIO SCSI and give it the location for the boot disk. Boot the VM. The VirtIO driver will now be controlling the boot disk.

Warning: Installation failure

Failure to install a VirtIO disk driver on a secondary disk before changing the boot disk to a VirtIO or VirtIO SCSI disk will cause the VM to crash with bug check 0x7b (inaccessible boot disk).

This section explain what qemu-ga is and how to install it.

4.2 Qemu guest agent installation #

Open a cmd.exe from the start menu. Go to the path that contains the qemu-ga directory. View the help with the command qemu-ga.exe --help. To install the service use:

qemu-ga.exe --service install

To start the service you can use the Windows* Service Administrative tools, or the command line:

net start qemu-ga.exe

The virt-v2v utility provides an easy way to convert virtual machines from one hypervisor format to another (for example, from Xen to KVM). In the case of Windows* guests running under Xen, this conversion process includes support for the automatic deployment of the SLE-VMDP.

   <!-- SUSE Virtual Machine Driver Pack (VMDP) setup program -->
   <app os='windows' name='vmdp'>
     <path>windows/VMDP-WIN-VERSION.exe</path>
   </app>

This section describes best practices, usage and potential problems using SUSE Linux Enterprise Virtual Machine Driver Pack.

How to deal with SLE-VMDP install and uninstall.

7.1 Expert iInstallation #

To help with automated installations, setup.exe currently has the following parameters:

• /auto_reboot

• /no_reboot

• /eula_accepted

• /force

• /reset_net_params

• /xen

• /virtio

The default is to install the drivers for the hypervisor that the VM is currently running on. Howerver, the Xen and virtio drivers can be installed at the same time if both the /xen and /virtio parameters are given.

• /auto_reboot: will cause the Windows* VM to automatically reboot after the setup has completed

• /no_reboot: will prevent the reboot prompt from being displayed after the setup has completed

• /eula_accepted: implies that the EULA has been read, accepted, and agreed to in all aspects. Accepting the EULA in this manner will therefore prevent the EULA acceptance dialog from being displayed during the setup process.

• /force: will force the installation of the drivers and overwrite any previous drivers that may have been installed

• /reset_net_params: will remove any net driver parameters that are still set to the default values. This is useful in upgrades when a net driver's parameter default changes. This will allow the new default to be used

• /xen: will install the Xen drivers

• /virtio: will install the virtio drivers

Additional options when running on a Xen hypervisor are:

• /boot_vscsi: will configure the Windows* VM to boot off a supplied SCSI device. To use the /boot_vscsi option, the VM's configuration file must contain a vscsi= line and a disk = [phy:/...] line

• /xvdisk: tells xenblk to only control disks of type xvd

• /netfront: tells xennet to only control NICs of type=netfront

Advanced parameters of the Setup.exe command:

• /w2k3, /w2k8, /win7, /win8, /win81, /win10 and /win10-2004 : are mutually exclusive. They allow the specified drivers to be installed in the running operating system, if compatible. These parameters are for testing purposes only and are not supported

This section describes how to configure the Windows* VM under virt-manager and how to install the VMDP while installing Windows Server 2022. This example is an installation of a KVM host. Using the ISO is only valid on KVM hosts.

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