Installation guide

This section covers the installation process for the KVM Windows virtio drivers. The KVM virtio drivers
can be loaded during the Windows installation or installed after the guest is installed.
You can install the virtio drivers on a guest virtual machine using one of the following methods:
hosting the installation files on a network accessible to the virtual machine
using a virtualized CD-ROM device of the driver installation disk .iso file
using a USB drive, by mounting the same (provided) .ISO file that you would use for the CD-ROM
using a virtualized floppy device to install the drivers during boot time (required and
recommended only for XP/2003)
This guide describes installation from the para-virtualized installer disk as a virtualized CD -ROM
device.
1. Do wn lo ad t he d rivers
The virtio-win package contains the virtio block and network drivers for all supported
Windows guest virtual machines.
Download and install the virtio-win package on the host with the yum command.
# yum install virtio-win
The list of virtio-win packages that are supported on Windows operating systems, and the
current certified package version, can be found at the following URL:
windowsservercatalog.com.
Note that the Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor and Red Hat Enterprise Linux are
created on the same code base so the drivers for the same version (for example, Red Hat
Enterprise Virtualization Hypervisor 3.3 and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.5) are supported for
both environments.
The virtio-win package installs a CD-ROM image, vi rti o -wi n. i so , in the
/usr/share/vi rti o -wi n/ directory.
2. In st all t h e virt io drivers
When booting a Windows guest that uses virtio-win devices, the relevant virtio-win device
drivers must already be installed on this guest. The virtio-win drivers are not provided as
inbox drivers in Microsoft's Windows installation kit, so installation of a Windows guest on a
virtio-win storage device (viostor/virtio-scsi) requires that you provide the appropriate driver
during the installation, either directly from the vi rti o -wi n. i so or from the supplied Virtual
Floppy image vi rti o -wi n<version>. vfd .
10.2. Inst alling t he drivers on an inst alled Windows guest virt ual
machine
This procedure covers installing the virtio drivers with a virtualized CD-ROM after Windows is
installed.
Follow this procedure to add a CD-ROM image with vi rt-manag er and then install the drivers.
Pro ced u re 10.1. In st allin g f ro m t h e d river CD- RO M imag e wit h virt - man ag er
Red Hat Ent erp rise Linux 6 Virt ualiz at ion Host Configurat ion and G uest Inst allat ion G uide
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