SUSE Linux Enterprise Virtual Machine Driver Pack

SUSE® Linux Enterprise Virtual Machine Driver Pack (SLE VMDP) contains disk, network, and balloon device drivers for Microsoft Windows Operating Systems that enable the high performance hosting of the unmodified guests on top of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 (SLES 10) SP4 or later and Xen 3.2, though the recommended host is SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12 (SLES 12) or later and Xen 4.4 or KVM 3.12. In order to use these paravirtualized drivers, the underlying hardware must be Intel* Virtualization Technology (Intel-VT) or AMD Virtualization (AMD-V) enabled. The guest Operating Systems supported by this driver pack are:

  • Microsoft Windows Server 2012 R2 or later (WHQL certified)
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2012 or later (WHQL certified)
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1 or later (WHQL certified)
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2008 SP2 or later(WHQL certified)
  • Microsoft Windows Server 2003 SP2 or later (WHQL certified)
  • Microsoft Windows 8.1 or later
  • Microsoft Windows 8 or later
  • Microsoft Windows 7 SP1 or later
  • Microsoft Windows Vista SP2 or later

Note: Customers can now download the latest versions of these drivers directly from the Novell download site. Relevant subscription is necessary for support and maintenance requests of SLE VMDP.

Virtualization allows the consolidation of Windows and Linux workloads on newer, more powerful, energy-efficient hardware while promoting effective utilization of unused capacity, quick recovery from datacenter disaster and significant reduction of costs. While the paravirtualized flavor of a guest OS is aware of the underlying virtualization platform, and can therefore interact efficiently with the network and block devices, the situation is less promising for a full-virtualized guest OS (a.k.a HVM guest). Thus, unmodified operating systems such as Windows are unaware of the virtualization platform and expect to interact directly with the hardware. Because this is not possible when consolidating servers, the hardware must be emulated for the operating system. Emulation can be slow, but it is especially troubling for high-throughput disk and network subsystems, resulting in considerable performance loss.

The device drivers in SLE VMDP bring many of the performance advantages of paravirtualized operating systems to unmodified operating systems because only the paravirtualized device driver (not the rest of the operating system) is aware of the virtualization platform. For example, a paravirtualized disk appears as a normal, physical disk to the operating system. However, the disk device driver interacts directly with the virtualization platform (with no emulation) to efficiently deliver disk access, allowing the disk and network subsystems to operate at near native speeds in a virtualized environment, without requiring changes to existing operating systems.

SLE VMDP also includes memory ballooning capabilities. Memory ballooning allows the memory available to a virtual machine to shrink and expand within the range specified by the virtual machine's configuration parameters.

Download and Installation

The SUSE® Linux Enterprise Virtual Machine Driver Pack is available for download as one binary file: a Windows* self-extracting zip file (.exe). There is also a virtual floppy disk (.vfd) for Windows* 2003 and an ISO image (.iso) for Windows* 2008 and newer that may be used for VMs running on KVM.

Prerequisites

  1. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server (SLES) 10 SP4 or later, or SLES 11 SP2 or later
  2. Fully virtualized Windows virtual machines

setup.exe installation instructions for KVM and Xen

  1. Download the Windows .exe file directly into your Windows VM.
  2. Launch the .exe to extract the installation program.
  3. Launch setup.exe from the root of the newly created directory.
  4. Accept the EULA and follow the prompts to complete the driver installation.
  5. Reboot the VM when prompted by the installation program.

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, shutdown the VM, add the VirtIO devices, and start the VM. Once booted, 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, shutdown 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.

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.

QEMU Guest Agent (KVM VMs)

VMDP setup allows for the installation of the qemu guest agent service for Windows when invoked with the /qemu-ga command line parameter. The qemu guest agent requires the VM to be equipped with the qemu guest agent channel. Without the qemu guest agent channel, the qemu guest agent can install but will not load. Trying to load without the channel results in errors in the event log.

.vfd and .iso installation instructions

A Windows* VM may attach the VMDP vfd or iso. The vfd is targeted for Windows* 2003 VMs running on KVM. It contains VirtIO disk drivers and a self-extracting exe that contain all the VirtIO drivers for only Windows* 2003. The ISO contains VirtIO disk drivers for Windows* 2008 and newer. It also contains the full VMDP exe that contains all the VirtIO and Xen drivers for all supported Windows platforms.

.vfd and .iso for VirtIO Boot Disk installation at VM creation instructions

This method is only used for VMs running on KVM and is used to install the VirtIO disk driver on the boot disk while the VM is being installed.

  1. See instructions on creating VMs for attaching floppy disks and ISOs as well as setting the boot disk as a VirtIO disk or VirtIO SCSI disk.
  2. Add the vfd or iso to the VM configuration. Use the vfd for Windows* 2003 and the iso for Windows* 2008 and newer.
  3. Set the boot disk to be of type VirtIO or VirtIO SCSI.
  4. Finish all other VM configuration options.
  5. Start the VM installation.
  6. For Windows* 2003, at the very beginning of the installation there is an option to press F6 for an OEM SCSI disk installation. At that time, press F6. The VirtIO disk driver from the vfd can then be selected and installed.
  7. For Windows* 2008 and newer, on the “Where do you want to install Windows” screen, select “Load driver” and follow the prompts. This will allow the VirtIO disk driver to be installed for the boot disk.
  8. Continue the Windows installation.
  9. After the VM is completely installed, the remaining VirtIO drivers can be installed by copying the .exe from the vfd or iso onto the VM's disk and performing a normal .exe installation.

Additional Xen setup instructions: /boot_vscsi

Setup and the /boot_vscsi option: The Xen VMDP SCSI driver is capable of controlling a physical SCSI disk such as /dev/sdb. To run the VMDP SCSI driver on the boot disk, use setup /boot_vscsi. If the /boot_vscsi option is not used in conjunction with setup, pvctrlw.exe can be used later to indicate that the VMDP SCSI driver should control the boot disk. Before using the /boot_vscsi option or pvctrlw.exe, the VM's config file must already contain the necessary SCSI information for the boot disk: the disk line needs to reference the physical disk e.g. disk=['phy:/dev/sdb,...'] and there must be a vscsi= line that corresponds to the physical disk. SCSI devices and disks, other than the boot disk, that are to be controlled by the VMDP SCSI driver are not placed in the disk= line but are only referenced in the vscsi= line.

Known Issues

For information on known issues for this release, see the README file within the archive, or consult the SUSE Linux Enterprise Virtual Machine Driver Pack Guides..