If you simply try to install Windows Server 2016 in a VM with the VMware Paravirtual SCSI controller behind the hard disk you are booting from, Windows will not see any drives available for the install. However, we can click the Load Driver link to browse to the driver we need to install.
Vmscsi Driver Download
Download: https://gohhs.com/2vB2qt
We can get the driver from the VMware tools ISO image. A simple way to have access to both your Operating system install and VMware tools is to mount an additional CD/DVD drive to the VM. Make sure both are connected (had already disconnected the second drive when I captured the below screen clip).
With Windows Server 2016 Install VMware Paravirtual SCSI controller requires that we browse to the driver files located on the VMware tools ISO. As I show above, a simple way to do this without much effort is to add a second CD/DVD drive to the VM and then mount the VMware tools ISO to this drive. After that, we can browse to the driver files the operating system needs to install the PVSCSI controller.
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesLSI_SASImport the registry keys from step 4 on to the source system to be converted.
Restart the source system to complete installation. This will require a downtime of the source system.
Perform another conversion with VMware Converter.
Windows 2003 (lsilogic and vmscsi)To copy the appropriate disk controller driver from a working virtual machine with Windows 2003 installed:
HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINESYSTEMCurrentControlSetServicesvmscsiNote: The vmscsi service registry key may not exist if VMware Tools is not installed on the virtual machine.Import the registry keys from step 6 on to the conversion source.
Restart the source to complete installation.
Perform another conversion with VMware Converter.
Windows XP / 2000 / NT (buslogic and vmscsi)To copy the appropriate disk controller driver from a working virtual machine with a Windows XP/2000/NT guest operating system:
Note: The vmscsi service registry key may not exist if VMware Tools is not installed on the virtual machine.Import the registry keys from step 6 on to the conversion source.
Restart the source to complete installation.
Perform another conversion with VMware Converter.
At this point the VM was ready for Windows 7 to be installed. The Windows 7 Ultimate DVD was still in the DVD drive of my MacBook Pro so I opened My Computer and double clicked the DVD to begin the installation process. Again I worked my way through the first few screens. When I got to the point where I had to select the location of SCSI Controller driver, I clicked Browse and selected the A: drive. Windows duly found the Controller and the installation continued.
VMware's preconfigured VM templates don't always use the storage controllers that have the best performance. The reason is that Windows 2016 does not come with the corresponding drivers. The result is that it is impossible to install a new VM running Windows Server 2016 out of the box.
Then add a small 2 GB hard disk and attach it to SCSI controller 1 (make sure to select SCSI 1:0 as the connection). This disk is not a system disk, so the VM will boot normally, and the Windows operating system will automatically find the drivers it can use to install this VMware Paravirtual controller.
You can download the latest VMware tools from VMware, or you can use the one bundled with your ESXi installation within the Locker directory. The corresponding ISO image files are located at /locker/packages/.
Per default Winternals ERD Commander 2007 doesnt support the VMWare mass storage driver. Therefore you couldnt simply mount the ISO and boot it. It will not be able to connect to the HD and detect the Windows OS. Therefore you need to change the ISO and include the VMWare drivers. This could be done via the following steps:
VirtIO Drivers are paravirtualized drivers for kvm/Linux (see -kvm.org/page/Virtio). In short, they enable direct (paravirtualized) access to devices and peripherals for virtual machines using them, instead of slower, emulated, ones. A quite extended explanation about VirtIO drivers can be found here -virtio.
Note that this repository provides not only the most recent, but also many older versions.Those older versions can still be useful when a Windows VM shows instability or incompatibility with a newer driver version.
The importance of selecting the right storage controller cannot be emphasized enough. Newer storage controller types might not be supported in older operating systems. For that reason, the drivers included in the chosen guest OS should be taken into account in order to select the best default controller. Virtual machine hardware compatibility (VMware hardware version) and device type (virtual hard disk or DVD-ROM) are also important factors. Newer hardware versions support more storage controllers.
Before changing the storage controller used for a boot disk, you should ensure that the guest operating system (OS) supports this controller type and that the appropriate drivers are installed in the guest OS. When you connect storage devices to multiple storage controllers, input/output performance can be increased compared to connecting all disk drives to a single storage controller. Hence, if more than one SCSI controller is used for a VM, the recommended practice is to distribute virtual disks across these SCSI controllers for better performance.
This VMware SCSI controller was one of the first storage controller types emulated for VMware vSphere VMs. Older Windows versions contain a driver for this controller type by default and, for that reason, this controller can be used in VM configurations to install old versions of Windows on a VM (for example, Windows 2000). The BusLogic Parallel SCSI controller is now considered a legacy controller. Virtual machines with disks larger than 2 TB are not supported. Queue depth is limited to 1 by the driver, and this has an impact on performance. If you need higher performance for VM storage, consider using the LSI Logic Parallel SCSI storage controller.
LSI Logic Parallel is formerly known as the LSI Logic SCSI controller. This is another VMware SCSI storage controller that has been available from the first versions of the VMware virtualization platform. The LSI Logic Parallel SCSI controller is also emulated and is supported by a high number of operating systems including old operating systems because they contain a driver for this storage controller by default. A queue depth of 32 is supported by these drivers, which has made this VMware SCSI controller a common choice and default selection for many guest operating systems. LSI Logic Parallel is selected by default when creating a Windows Server 2003 VM because this storage controller supports SCSI2 commands and Windows Server 2003 supports this SCSI standard.
Note that changing the storage controller for a VMware VM when a guest operating system is installed can make existing virtual disks inaccessible if the needed driver is not installed on the guest OS. VMware Tools must be installed on the guest OS because VMware Tools contains the driver needed to work with the VMware paravirtual SCSI controller.
When you install Windows on a VM and a system disk is connected to the VMware paravirtual SCSI controller, you may need to insert a virtual floppy image that contains drivers and select the driver for the controller during installation to make Windows detect the installation disk.
If you want to change the storage controller for a boot disk, you must ensure that the storage controller driver is installed in the boot mode. If a VM is configured to use BIOS, you may need to modify the VM configuration and BIOS settings. If a VM is configured to use UEFI, the options to change the storage controller for the boot disk are more flexible, and there is no additional setup in most cases.
If you now browse to the folder you extracted into go to C:\Temp\Extract\VMware...VMware Tools...VMware...Drivers and you will see the folders pvscsi and vmxnet3 which have the drivers we want. Under each of the folders there are two folder options, Vista and Win8. For a 2012 R2 server you want Win8 so delete the Vista folder from both vmxnet3 and pvscsi. It will be easier if you move the folders to a shorter path such as C:\Temp\Drivers.
You can see this has four versions available in the same install.wim. We will need to add the drivers to each index. Same procedure as before - mount the wim, add the drivers, unmount and commit the changes:
Windows is different from Linux-based guests as it requires the user to load the VirtIO drivers to be able to recognize the virtual devices provided by QEMU/KVM. The below list reflects the tested configurations with various OSes, QEMU machine types, and BIOSes.
From time to time, the Fedora project will release new versions of the VirtIO drivers which may resolve bugs and improve performance. In some cases, driver updates may be required for upgrading your Windows OS from one version to another (e.g. Windows 7/8.1 to Windows 10). To update your drivers, perform the following steps:
If you are assigning a graphics device to your Windows guest that uses an HDMI connection and you wish to push audio through that connection, you may need to perform a registry modification in Windows to ensure the audio driver remains working properly (this is most prevalent with NVIDIA devices). For a comprehensive explanation of MSI and VFIO interrupts, you can visit Alex Williamson's blog[1]. Here's the procedure for doing this:
Microsoft's website suggests that if you want to upgrade to Windows 10, use the upgrade assistant in the bottom right corner to perform your upgrade. This is known to be buggy and potentially cause issues (even on traditional Windows PCs). The preferred mechanism to upgrade is to download the Windows 10 ISO directly and attach it to your virtual machine, then use that to perform the upgrade itself. 2ff7e9595c
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