Creating and Managing Virtual Machines - Getting Started with Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization - page 80

Installing VirtIO drivers during the Windows
installation
The Windows installer doesn't ship any VirtIO drivers as a part of the operating system in-
staller. If you remember, we mentioned using the virtual hard drive interface type in order
to set it to VirtIO for better I/O performance in the Adding virtual disk section in this
chapter. So, if you attach a virtual hard disk type of VirtIO and try to boot your Windows
installer, the installer will not able to detect your virtual hard drive. To overcome this, we
need to use a virtual floppy drive uploaded automatically by the RHEV-M installer under
the ISO domain. To install the VirtIO driver before starting the Windows operating system
installation, follow these steps:
1. Go to the Images tab of ISO Storage domain , and you will see the list of prepop-
ulated guest drivers' ISO and virtual floppy drives.
2. Once you have configured all the required resources for the virtual machine to
start, select the virtual machine, and right-click on it to select Run Once .
3. In the Run Once window, under Boot Options , select Attach Floppy and the vir-
tual floppy drive, which is virtio-win_amd64.vfd , since we are going to deploy
the 64-bit edition of the Windows guest operating system. Though the virtual
floppy's .vfd file ends with amd64 , the same file should be used for both Intel
and AMD x86_64-bit machines. In the Attach CD field, select the appropriate
Windows ISO for installation.
4. Under the Initial Run section of the Run Once window, you can use the Sysprep
utility to automate your Windows guest installation. To enable Sysprep, attach the
Sysprep floppy from the Attach Floppy drop-down menu.
5. The rest of the options are intact, such as the Linux virtual machine creation, so
move ahead and click on OK .
6. Select the virtual machine, right-click on it, and select Console . This displays a
window to the virtual machine where you will be prompted to begin installing the
operating system.
7. Windows installations include an option to load additional drivers early in the in-
stallation process. Use the Load drivers option and then use Browse ; this will list
your Floppy drive(A:) attached to the virtual machine. Expand it, select amd64
and the operating system version, and release it—in our case, this is
win2008R2 —and hit Enter .
8. This will give you the option to install three VirtIO drivers, one for the virtual Eth-
ernet adapter, SCSI controller, and SCSI pass-through controller. Select SCSI con-
troller and press Enter ; this will install the necessary VirtIO driver, and your virtu-