Windows 2003 guest best practices

Introduction

This is a set of best practices to follow when installing a Windows 2003 guest on a Proxmox VE server. Right now it's a work in progress, written by a Proxmox noob but hopefully soon it will be a comprehensive and reliable document. Please feel free to add to it, even if just to pose a potential best practice.

Power settings

• In order for the Windows 2003 guest to shutdown cleanly in the event of a shutdown on the Proxmox VE host you need to:

1. enable (Start -> Run -> secpol.msc -> "Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options")
   1. "Shutdown: Allow system to be shut down without having to log on".
   2. "Interactive logon: Do not require CTRL+ALT+DEL"
2. disable logon screen screensaver using regedit

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REGEDIT4

[HKEY_USERS\.DEFAULT\Control Panel\Desktop]
"ScreenSaveActive"="0"

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• Optional: It may also be useful to set Shutdown Warning Dialog Timeout. This can be done with the following .reg file

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Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00

[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows]
"ShutdownWarningDialogTimeout"=dword:00000001

Alternatively you can you can use the following adm template to apply it via GPO

CLASS MACHINE
	CATEGORY "otherSystem"
	KEYNAME "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows"
		POLICY "Shutdown Warning Dialog Timeout"
		KEYNAME "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows"
		VALUENAME "ShutdownWarningDialogTimeout"
		VALUEON NUMERIC 1
		VALUEOFF DELETE
			PART "Shutdown Warning Dialog Timeout" NUMERIC
			KEYNAME "SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Windows"
			VALUENAME "ShutdownWarningDialogTimeout"
			REQUIRED
			MIN 0
			MAX 9999
			DEFAULT 1
			END PART
		END POLICY
	END CATEGORY
CLASS USER

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NOTE: For this policy to be visible in the Group Policy Object Editor the Only show policy settings that can be fully managed filter must be unchecked.

Disk

raw vs qcow2

Raw file format provides better performance while qcow2 offers advanced features such as copy on write and snapshots.

virtio storage drivers

Use virtio dirvers for best performance. See http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Paravirtualized_Block_Drivers_for_Windows

UNTESTED: caching

Under disk properties in Windows 2003 you can turn off the disk cache (Windows caches writes in ram). KVM enables it's own writethough caching which relies on the Debian hosts caching (I think). Plus modern disks have a sizable hardware cache. Do we really need all this chained redundant caching?

With VIRTIO the system sees the DEV as a USB so the way to turn off caching is: Computer Mgmt -> Disk Mgmt -> Select Drive (system) -> properties -> Hardware -> VirtIO Drv -> Properties -> Policies -> Optimize for quick removal

UNTESTED: sparse disk

Use a utility like SDelete to zero out a drive and take advantage of ext3's sparse file handling.

Network

Use e1000 NIC. It's stable and performs well. BUT only with the latest drivers from Intel, download from intel.com! (If you use the integrated drivers, the device manager shows a working NIC, but it does not.)

Update - 2011-04-14 - The e1000 drivers on the Intel site seem to be withdrawn & only embedded (Windows SP 2) are on the site. This (old, circa 2004) driver is not stable under load test.

Use virtio driver as these are kept updated by Fedora virtio NIC drivers need to be loaded post install & can be found here : http://alt.fedoraproject.org/pub/alt/virtio-win/latest/images/bin/ Information on install can be found here : http://pve.proxmox.com/wiki/Paravirtualized_Network_Drivers_for_Windows

I highly recommend to add this regfix http://www.intel.com/support/de/network/sb/cs-005897.htm (http://www.intel.com/support/network/sb/CS-005897.htm?wapkw=%284D36E972%29 in english). HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\ControlSet001\Control\Class\{4D36E972-E325-11CE-BFC1-08002BE10318}\00xx where you need to search for your network card an add a DWORD "MonitorModeEnabled"="1". ControlSet001 can be CurrentControlSet.

Page File Settings

This is a placeholder as I'm not sure what the optimum page file settings are. My guess is that it's best to create a small static page file and assign plenty of RAM.

Sources and further reading

www.linux-kvm.org/page/Tuning_KVM