What's a good VM solution to run a Windows VM in Linux on a headless server with decent networking support without jumping through hoops? I've used VirtualBox before but it was a pain to manage as it's not really meant to be headless. I still need to be able to use the console I just don't want to have to constantly keep it up in a VNC session or something.

I tried KVM/Qemu but it's just dog slow and overall flaky and unusable and too hackish. The documentation is all over the place, and there's too many different parts to it that overcomplicate it.

Anything else I can try that is more user friendly?

KVM + Virtio drivers is your best bet.

With libvirt and libvirt-manager you have a GUI like interface similur to Vbox. You can either access the VM directly or RDP into the windows machine remotly.

However there is also Xen (now called XenSever)

So, if you want a windows VM on a linux host but don't want to use virtualbox or qemu, that leaves only xen.

Trying that now but networking is iffy to setup and it's bloody slow. In windows 2008 the 4 round ball animation thingy was going at like 1 frame per minute, literally. I just cancelled. Upon googling "kvm slow" I found that you can play with the cpu flags. I clicked "copy host cpu configuration" and it picked Nehalem but now it BSODs. Tried other configs too.

I guess if there's no other options have to make this work somehow. If I do ps aux this is the command line it's using to run:

Is there a way to alter that? I find lot of stuff online that says to add/change parameters but not sure how to do it through virt-manager. I don't want to do it manually as I want to be able to use the virt-manager console and not VNC, which is not exactly the most secure thing.

Make sure the windows VirtIO drivers are installed (makes a huge difference)

I'm not even close to being at the stage of being able to install anything. Just trying to install Windows itself is bloody slow as hell. Like I said, just the logo animation was going like 1 frame per minute. This is on a Xeon server. In VMware or Virtualbox it would be pretty much normal speed. Is there a way to speed it up and make it run at a normal pace?

use xen then

but i have no real issued on my openSUSE 13 install running Debian7.7 on KVM

a terminal boot runs VERY fast

now
seeing as this is a VM
using my Nvidia GPU for video is out

that said 1080P video runs fairly well on a 1220 x768 screen

I still need to remain usability of the actual host OS, as it is my web/dns/email/etc server so Xen is not an option. I was just hoping there was other options than kvm/qemu but looks like I might be stuck.

How did you manage to make it fast? What settings do you use in virt-manager, or what other extra steps did you take? Is dedicating a video card the only way? How do you do that on a headless server with no physical access?

Well just found out the hard way that OVH (my provider) loads a custom kernel that removes support for kernel modules:

http://forum.ovh.com/showthread.php?29544-iptables

Would this be a problem? Was not my issue last time I tried kvm/qemu though, it was still dog slow.

I think there's suppose to be a module called intel-kvm or something right?

Guess I'll forget this idea, and run the VM from home on my ESX server. It's for a game server and that's not against my ISP ToS anyway. Given I have FTTH now I have the bandwidth for it.

I think we've disagreed about this before, and I have to renew my disagreement. The hypervisor is rock-solid, and not flaky at all in Fedora 18, 19, 20, or 21, and RHEL 6. I've used Fedora, RHEL 6, RHEL 7, and Windows 7 as a guest OS, and none are slow.

I do agree on doc, though. It really sucks.

It's fast, simple, easy to use, and overall not complicated, personally. I have no performance issues in networking at all. Can you be more clear about what, exactly, you think is "slow"?

Out of curiosity, if it is a display speed issue, what kind of display server are you using? the stock VNC? If yes, maybe delete the VNC display, and add a new display server as type Spice server. It is much, much more advanced than VNC.

I can start and use my servers remotely, and even up to 20 miles away and it's still not that slow (mousing can be a hair laggy, but not too bad). I had to do a bunch of work on a KVM server on the east coast and it was understandably laggy.

EVERYTHING is slow. It's not the display but the actual processing. Load up a windows ISO, it takes bloody ages for anything to happen. Screens to change, processes to happen etc. The last time I tried it I got further than I did this time, I got to "expanding files". After about 2 days I gave up. Barely moved 1 percent. Networking I can't really figure out other than NAT, and even then, no idea how I even forward ports, there's nothing in the GUI for that. Most of the documentation I read points towards command line stuff like flags that I have to add, well, how do I do that when I'm using the GUI, and if I'm using straight command line then I lose the ability to use the console. Don't want to do the VNC garbage, that's ridiculously insecure. I'm running the virt-manager client through an X session. The client itself is fast, it's the actual VM processing itself that is slow. It's like trying to do stuff on a 286 or something.

What did you do to optimize it so that it's faster? Or is KVM/qemu simply incompatible with Windows? Maybe it's only made for Linux guests?

In this particular server though I think I face more problems than before since it turns out the host installs a custom kernel and they disabled kernel modules and pretty sure there's some kernel module stuff I have to do for it to work properly. It's too late to reinstall or make drastic changes now as this is production. Think I'll just have to give up and run the VM I wanted to run on my home network instead. I have the bandwidth for it anyway and my ISP does not allow web servers but game servers are ok. I can have a VM up and running in ESXi with full network/vlan support in less than an hour without having to do any screwing around. Downside with ESXi is that it requires a windows client so I end up having to use a VirtualBox VM just to manage my VMs.

One of these days I'd really like to figure out how to make this work properly though or hope that a better management tool comes out that does all the dirty work. The biggest turn offs for me is how slow it is, and how finicky the networking is. Especially if you want to do vlans. If I recall every time I add a new vlan I also have to restart networking and do other changes to host system network files. That's not cool on a production server. Programs like ESXi or even VirtualBox don't have this requirement.

This runs counter to any of my experiences. Networking is simple. Forwarding is done on the host (iptables). You don't normally have to use the CLI, but there is a *lot* of things you can do with the bridging if you want to. Though, with NAT and direct networking, most requirements are met.

If you're not a fan of VNC, the spice server and the QXL driver are your best bets.

Nothing? I've made no changes. I've installed the required packages for KVM, QEMU, and the frontend. Easy.

This is not correct. It is fully compatible with Windows. That's why KVM, RHEV and RDO/Openstack are so flexible. It's not bloody slow at all...

Well, My servers are a crappy Dell 1950 server (~10 years old), and my Lenovo laptop. I suffer from none of your issues.

Maybe it's time to collect the details of your install so we can see if there's an obvious problem.

Just took a video of me attempting to install windows. Got all sorts of errors that I've never had before but this particular server is probably a bad example given the custom kernel that OVH seems to load. The slowness is pretty much how it was when I tried it on a similar machine with proper vanilla CentOS though. Tried both KVM and Qemu in the options. Never really know which one to pick. In this case one of them caused an error so I tried the other one and then it worked.

It eventually blue screened but it shows just how bloody slow it is. I imagine the blue screen is some other issue that I'd have to google further and troubleshoot.

You can also see it's not video lag, it's the actual processing that's slow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mDQ_iqp8ynE

(give it some time to process, going to bed, not expecting a response any time soon given it's Christmas and stuff. Merry Christmas all)

Can you run a Sosreport? Maybe not, due to this being a hosted server. If you can, maybe run Sosreport -a and send share it from somewhere? I'm happy to review.