[SOLVED] Windows Guest Install - Storage Options

[stnd]

I am trying to figure out what are the storage options for installing a windows VM.

I installed a 1TB SSD into the host computer and was hoping to run a Windows VM on that drive. Do I have to create an LVM storage and then create the VM to consume the entire LVM or is it possible to passthrough the disk raw to the VM and install it directly? Been trying to figure out the second option with no luck.

I have added the disk to the VM. And boot with the windows iso, but when it comes to selecting a disk, the disk is not available. At the same time if I don't boot with the iso then the old windows on the disk tries to boot and fails.


Thanks for any help you can provide.

 

[_gabriel]

you need a second virtual optical drive with virtio.iso tools which contain drivers for the optimized storage controller virtio.
another way is use sata type disk to allow Windows to see disk natively.

 

[stnd]

you need a second virtual optical drive with virtio.iso tools which contain drivers for the optimized storage controller virtio.
another way is use sata type disk to allow Windows to see disk natively.

Thank you for your response.

I tried the first option with no luck, when I load the drivers it still doesn't show the drive, this was done following the instructions from the proxmox documentation. https://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Windows_10_guest_best_practices

I am not sure what to do for the second option of using sata type disk, could you elaborate?

 

[aaron]

If you are installing the VM and not migrating an already existing (bare metal) Windows, then the best way would be to add a second CDROM drive and point it to the VirtIO ISO. In the Windows Installer, once you are at the point of the disk selection, you can add additional drivers.

The VirtIO SCSI one is in the "vioscsi" directory and the one for VirtIO Block should be in the "viostor" directory.

Using SATA oder IDE as bus type should work, since Windows has drivers for them out of the box. But we recommend using one of the VirtIO bus types for much better performance. Additionally, they are used a lot more often, therefore bugs are more likely to be discovered quickly.

 

[stnd]

If you are installing the VM and not migrating an already existing (bare metal) Windows, then the best way would be to add a second CDROM drive and point it to the VirtIO ISO. In the Windows Installer, once you are at the point of the disk selection, you can add additional drivers.

The VirtIO SCSI one is in the "vioscsi" directory and the one for VirtIO Block should be in the "viostor" directory.

Using SATA oder IDE as bus type should work, since Windows has drivers for them out of the box. But we recommend using one of the VirtIO bus types for much better performance. Additionally, they are used a lot more often, therefore bugs are more likely to be discovered quickly.

I think I must be doing something wrong. The drivers are hidden for my hardware, I uncheck the hide option and install them but the drive still does not show up. The drive is a 1TB SSD connected to a SATA port. It has 3 existing partitions on it from a previous install, but I don't think that should matter as it should still show up for me to format with the windows installer, and it does show up as a boot option on the guest vm, just not in the installer.

agent: 1
balloon: 4096
bios: ovmf
boot: order=ide2;net0;sata0
cores: 12
cpu: host,hidden=1
efidisk0: prox:vm-500-disk-0,efitype=4m,pre-enrolled-keys=1,size=1M
ide2: local:iso/Windows10-64.iso,media=cdrom,size=4671872K
machine: pc-q35-7.1
memory: 12288
meta: creation-qemu=7.1.0,ctime=1676912013
name: win10
net0: virtio=3E:FB:AE:AE:71:EC,bridge=vmbr0,firewall=1
numa: 0
ostype: win10
sata0: local:iso/virtio-win-0.1.229.iso,media=cdrom,size=522284K
scsihw: virtio-scsi-single
smbios1: uuid=f228082b-d075-49c1-8a14-f992697a8bbd
sockets: 1
virtio2: /dev/disk/by-id/ata-Crucial_CT1050MX300SSD1_174819E425C2,backup=0,cache=writeback,discard=on,size=1025600184K
vmgenid: 57448b79-cf09-4f24-bdbf-c3d835ba8f2f

 

[stnd]

I think I got it by changing the drive to scsi0 instead of virtio2.

agent: 1
balloon: 4096
bios: ovmf
boot: order=ide2;scsi0;net0;sata0
cores: 12
efidisk0: prox:vm-501-disk-0,efitype=4m,pre-enrolled-keys=1,size=1M
ide2: local:iso/Windows10-64.iso,media=cdrom,size=4671872K
machine: pc-q35-7.1
memory: 12288
meta: creation-qemu=7.1.0,ctime=1676914164
name: win10-2
net0: virtio=B2:42:9E:21:B5:5F,bridge=vmbr0,firewall=1
numa: 0
ostype: win10
sata0: local:iso/virtio-win-0.1.229.iso,media=cdrom,size=522284K
scsi0: /dev/disk/by-id/ata-Crucial_CT1050MX300SSD1_174819E425C2,backup=0,cache=writeback,discard=on,size=1025600184K
scsihw: virtio-scsi-single
smbios1: uuid=224c8816-3458-42ec-8c0c-531cda01faf5
sockets: 1
vmgenid: 8f306197-51d2-41fb-919b-a83a5dcf8bdb