[kwlug-disc] KVM hypervisor for Win7 with snapshots

[Digimer]

On 02/06/16 11:17 PM, Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc wrote:
> On Thu, Jun 02, 2016 at 01:50:03AM -0400, Digimer wrote:
>> On 02/06/16 01:39 AM, Paul Nijjar via kwlug-disc wrote:
>>>
>>> it looks like using KVM might be a solution. Outstanding questions at
>>> this point: 
>>>
>>> - Has anybody set something like this up?
>>
>> We host a lot of Win7 guests on KVM on our systems. However, we don't
>> try to have them look like windows on boot. Instead, we let gnome boot
>> and show the user how to open virt-manager, double-click on the VM and
>> full screen it. Even our no-idea-about-linux-at-all users get this
>> pretty quickly. There may be a way to do it though with auto-login and
>> setting gnome to auto-start virt-manager... not sure.
> 
> One idea I have heard of is to start X without a window manager, and
> then open a VNC session on that session. There are a bunch of
> questions I have around this (performance? USB redirection? Pressing
> Alt-F1 to break out?) but it might be a possibility. 
> 
> What kind of specifications do you need to run Win7 guests over KVM
> well? Would 4GB RAM be enough?

With virtio net and block drivers, the performance of win7 is basically
native (save for video). So it is more a question of what you need for
your apps.

>> What I would recommend is this; Stop the windows machine, create the
>> snapshot, start windows back up. By snapshotting this way, you can be
>> 100% certain that the image will be consistent and reliable. Given that
>> you can boot immediately after you create the snapshot and then 'dd'
>> out, the downtime should be minimal.
> 
> That is helpful, thanks. We would only be taking snapshots after
> updates, so I think that we could make sure the machines are off.
> 
> - Paul 

-- 
Digimer
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