Install Windows 2016 Server on Proxmox VE (Video tutorial)

[tom]

We just created a short tutorial for installing a current windows. This includes VirtIO drivers, Qemu-disk agent and Balloon Service installation inside Windows. We used windows 2016, but its also the same for Windows 10.

We used the VirtIO drivers from the Fedora project.

Install Windows 2016 Server on Proxmox VE

 

[Stefan Pettersson]

When installing the Balloon service I get "Failed. Error 1063 The service process could not connect to the service controller"

Any ideas?

 

[tom]

When installing the Balloon service I get "Failed. Error 1063 The service process could not connect to the service controller"

Any ideas?

do you see the ballooning device in the device manager?
do you install via CMD as shown in the video as administrator?

 

[Stefan Pettersson]

Yes, i'm installing via CMD, starting it as Administrator.

Dont see ballooning service, only Qemu Guest Agent and Qemu Guest Agent VSS Provider.

Balloon driver is installed and have no errors in Device manager, except for " HID Button over Interrupt Driver"

*EDIT*

The install is one month old so have used "virto" as driver for the disk. Also changed "Installed operation System" from w2k12 to w2k16
RAM is set to static and I have ticked the litl box beloww "balloon"

 

[talos]

I do it a bit differently, i use just one virtual cd drive and switch the images for installing the drivers. After you are done installing drivers, you load the windows image again and press refresh on the partition list (or you get some error about windows cant be installed...)

On driver step, you can repeat installing all the drivers you need, like scsi, vioserial (agent), balloon, netkvm, and if you configured it, spice graphics drivers, i think it easier to do all needed drivers in the installation step.

 

[MichaelTrip]

Thanks for the amazing tutorial. Everything works here except shutting down. I also have the "HID Button over Interrupt Driver". No driver to be found. Could this be the issue why my vm won't shut down?

 

[tom]

Thanks for the amazing tutorial. Everything works here except shutting down. I also have the "HID Button over Interrupt Driver". No driver to be found. Could this be the issue why my vm won't shut down?

The device "HID Button over Interrupt Driver" already got drivers, but they do not work correctly, ignore it or better, contact the maintainer of this driver (Microsoft).

Shutting down with the qemu-agent is not affected by this.

 

[Stefan Pettersson]

Yes, i'm installing via CMD, starting it as Administrator.

Dont see ballooning service, only Qemu Guest Agent and Qemu Guest Agent VSS Provider.

Balloon driver is installed and have no errors in Device manager, except for " HID Button over Interrupt Driver"

*EDIT*

The install is one month old so have used "virto" as driver for the disk. Also changed "Installed operation System" from w2k12 to w2k16
RAM is set to static and I have ticked the litl box beloww "balloon"

Problem solved, I was logged in as my user (with local admin rights) and it dident work. The server is a domain controller. I then logged in as local administrator and it worked?? Have no ide why.

 

[Terrum]

Just out of curiosity, what exactly is the benefit of installing 'VirtIO drivers, Qemu-disk agent and Balloon Service' on Windows VMs with Proxmox? I might do this with my VMs if it actually helps performance. Currently I just use raw disks and writeback cache to assist with performance.

 

[MasterTH]

virtio delivers the best performance on io what you could expect out of your hardware. Virtio creates multiple IO-Threads not just a single one like IDE.

 

[talos]

Just out of curiosity, what exactly is the benefit of installing 'VirtIO drivers, Qemu-disk agent and Balloon Service' on Windows VMs with Proxmox? I might do this with my VMs if it actually helps performance. Currently I just use raw disks and writeback cache to assist with performance.

VirtIO are paravirtual drivers and deliver better perfomance than hardware emulating drivers.

Qemu Agents helps communication between Hypervisor and the Virtual Machine for example shutdown event.

Balloon Service is explained here: http://www.linux-kvm.org/page/Projects/auto-ballooning

 

[GadgetPig]

@Terrum. Make sure you do full proxmox backup of your windows VM, before updating to virtio drivers. And always use "stable" instead of "latest" virtio drivers (I've had cases where "latest" virtio builds stop windows from booting properly. YMMV of course.)

Search for the article in this forum converting IDE to virtio, It involves adding a 2nd hard drive 1gb size as virtio, which you can remove later after virtio drivers have been installed. And notate your current MAC address/static ip setup assigned to your VM nic, before changing it to virtio. BTW this is a great time to review your data backup practices, and make sure important data is backed in multiple locations (321 backup).

Good luck!

 

[TwiX]

Hi all,

Seems that the qemu-guest-agent (64bits) is not working with french versions of win2k8, 2012 r2 and 2016. I've tested several versions of the qemu-ga without success.
No problem with the 32 bit version of qemu-ga but it doesn't install the qemu-vss service.
Do you know where to report the issue ?

 

[GadgetPig]

Hi Twix, there's a bugs section on the same Fedora VirtIO download site with email links to KVM devs, and also Bugzilla. Sorry can't post links here, as I'm considered a new user (forum spam control)

 

[wolfgang]

I've tested several versions of the qemu-ga without success.

Did you activate the qemu Guest agent in the VM options and install the qemu-serial device before you tested it?
Because here is everything running on 2016 and 2012R2

 

[TwiX]

Yes of course, but I guess you used the En or German version of Windows.
Try with a French version you will see

 

[kevin00xxl]

Huge thanks for the how to video, only thing i am stuck with is the poor graphical acceleration in both Server 2016 and Windows 10 1703. Browsing the web is laggy and feels slow. Any ideas on how to fix this?

 

[tom]

=> use SPICE

See https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/SPICE

 

[eddie]

After install my windows server 2016 only usage 2GB ram but I allocated it 12G.
Does any know what happen? any idea?

Thanks

 

[frantek]

I've tried today to install Window Server 2016 on the new PVE 5 (fresh install) and got stuck with disk drivers. I've tried virtio and scsi for the disk and the drivers version 0.1.126 und 0.1.139 (/vioscsi/2k16/amd64). Window tells me that there are no drivers found ...

How to get this rolling ?