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 enable "Allow system to be shut down without having to log on". It can be found in the policy editor here: "Computer Configuration\Windows Settings\Security Settings\Local Policies\Security Options\Shutdown: Allow system to be shut down without having to log on", by running: gpedit.msc.
It may also be useful to set Shutdown Warning Dialog Timeout. This can be done with the following .reg file
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
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.