Virtualization: August 2009 Archives

After having installed Windows 2003 Enterprise Server in a Sun xVM (Xen 3.4.2-rc1-pre-xvm)-Environment, performance was slow due to qemu-dm's tremendous task to emulate ATA/IDE disk access and the Realtek 8139 network chipset.

Xen Block and network drivers however for Windows seemed to exist only in commercial binary-only form supplied from some of the Xen vendors. After googling around, I found the Xen Wiki which included an article about GPL PV drivers for Windows:

http://wiki.xensource.com/xenwiki/XenWindowsGplPv

Inside this article there is a link where these drivers can be downloaded in binary form:

http://www.meadowcourt.org/downloads/

For Windows 2003 Server the driver binary Microsoft Installer Archive (msi) is "wnet".
For my 3.4.2-xen-Setp (Sun xVM with OpenSolaris snv_121 as Dom0) I had to use gplpv_fre_wnet_x86_0.10.0.98-dontuse.msi. The other two versions did not work (resulting in a bluescreening windows...). I did not take "dontuse" literally...

Using OpenSolaris (BFU't to snv_121) and xvm-3.4.2-rc1-pre-xvm (cloned from hg.opensolaris.org) I am able to install Windows 2003 Server using VNC. Neat.

The problem remains that the "qm-demu" daemon running on the Dom0 side to emulate ATAPI disks and a RTL8139 network connection is quite resource consuming. Running online update on a Suse Linux HVM DomU results in qm-demu eating up a whole CPU. With Windows, the same.