Installing VirtIO driver on a new Windows virtual machine

Prerequisites

• Windows installation media accessible by the virtual machine, such as importing an ISO into a data volume and attaching it to the virtual machine.

About VirtIO drivers

VirtIO drivers are paravirtualized device drivers required for Microsoft Windows virtual machines to run in OKD Virtualization. The supported drivers are available in the container-native-virtualization/virtio-win container disk of the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog.

The container-native-virtualization/virtio-win container disk must be attached to the virtual machine as a SATA CD drive to enable driver installation. You can install VirtIO drivers during Windows installation on the virtual machine or added to an existing Windows installation.

After the drivers are installed, the container-native-virtualization/virtio-win container disk can be removed from the virtual machine.

See also: Installing VirtIO driver on an existing Windows virtual machine.

Supported VirtIO drivers for Microsoft Windows virtual machines

Adding VirtIO drivers container disk to a virtual machine

OKD Virtualization distributes VirtIO drivers for Microsoft Windows as a container disk, which is available from the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog. To install these drivers to a Windows virtual machine, attach the container-native-virtualization/virtio-win container disk to the virtual machine as a SATA CD drive in the virtual machine configuration file.

Prerequisites

• Download the container-native-virtualization/virtio-win container disk from the Red Hat Ecosystem Catalog. This is not mandatory, because the container disk will be downloaded from the Red Hat registry if it not already present in the cluster, but it can reduce installation time.

Procedure

1. Add the container-native-virtualization/virtio-win container disk as a cdrom disk in the Windows virtual machine configuration file. The container disk will be downloaded from the registry if it is not already present in the cluster.

   spec:
     domain:
       devices:
         disks:
           - name: virtiocontainerdisk
             bootOrder: 2 (1)
             cdrom:
               bus: sata
   volumes:
     - containerDisk:
         image: container-native-virtualization/virtio-win
       name: virtiocontainerdisk

   1

   OKD Virtualization boots virtual machine disks in the order defined in the VirtualMachine configuration file. You can either define other disks for the virtual machine before the container-native-virtualization/virtio-win container disk or use the optional bootOrder parameter to ensure the virtual machine boots from the correct disk. If you specify the bootOrder for a disk, it must be specified for all disks in the configuration.

2. The disk is available once the virtual machine has started:

   • If you add the container disk to a running virtual machine, use oc apply -f <vm.yaml> in the CLI or reboot the virtual machine for the changes to take effect.

   • If the virtual machine is not running, use virtctl start <vm>.

After the virtual machine has started, the VirtIO drivers can be installed from the attached SATA CD drive.

Installing VirtIO drivers during Windows installation

Install the VirtIO drivers from the attached SATA CD driver during Windows installation.

Procedure

1. Start the virtual machine and connect to a graphical console.

2. Begin the Windows installation process.

3. Select the Advanced installation.

4. The storage destination will not be recognized until the driver is loaded. Click Load driver.

5. The drivers are attached as a SATA CD drive. Click OK and browse the CD drive for the storage driver to load. The drivers are arranged hierarchically according to their driver type, operating system, and CPU architecture.

6. Repeat the previous two steps for all required drivers.

7. Complete the Windows installation.

Removing the VirtIO container disk from a virtual machine

After installing all required VirtIO drivers to the virtual machine, the container-native-virtualization/virtio-win container disk no longer needs to be attached to the virtual machine. Remove the container-native-virtualization/virtio-win container disk from the virtual machine configuration file.

Procedure

1. Edit the configuration file and remove the disk and the volume.

   $ oc edit vm <vm-name>

   spec:
     domain:
       devices:
         disks:
           - name: virtiocontainerdisk
             bootOrder: 2
             cdrom:
               bus: sata
   volumes:
     - containerDisk:
         image: container-native-virtualization/virtio-win
       name: virtiocontainerdisk

2. Reboot the virtual machine for the changes to take effect.