Windows VM best practices

[goinsnoopin]

I am getting ready to redo a few windows VMs this week and am looking to get some suggestions or best practice recommendations.  I am currently having an issue where I keep having to grow the size of my primary disk .  I know windows does have a tendency to do this.  I was thinking that when I rebuild the VM that I would keep just the windows install on the primary disk and then assign a second disk for all my programs.  Is this what most of you do?  Also curious how large you make the windows primary disk.

 

Any other tips or suggestions not listed in limetech's VM guides would be greatly appreciated!

 

Thanks,

Dan

 

[testdasi]

I would say, generally primary vdisk should be strictly for Windows critical components. All apps go on a share (either mounted as a disk or as a symlink folder). That way you don't have to constant grow your Primary vdisk (nor Secondary vdisk).

[BobPhoenix]

Also if doing Windows 7 VMs then switch the VNC video driver to cirrus from QXL.  Using QXL you will never get past the "Starting Windows" screen on Windows 7.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edit:  mispelled VNC

[edgeinterface]

I think preparing "base" VM helps a lot in the long run so you don't have to start from scratch every time you decide you need another VM with that OS.

 

I have 25GB "base" Win10 VM with all stuff I will need in every VM created out of it (so all updates at the time of creation, devices, drivers, applications like skype, slack, notepad++, windows commander, etc.). It's also activated Win10 so I wouldn't have issues when I clone it (I have several keys from kinguin but only used one so not leeching anything, money got paid).

 

That VM initially had 150GB vdisk but then I realized that's silly because copying that vdisk around takes some time even on ssd. Also not every VM will need so much space. So I cleaned up what I could within Win10 (like 9GB of Windows.old even though I did new clean installation not an upgrade) and got under 20GB with all files. So I shrunk it to 25GB and now I can spawn new "clone" in matter of seconds.

 

Now I have private VM resized to 50GB and work VM resized to 100GB. Also another 50GB VM hosting MSSQL server and IIS I use for my work and private development projects.

 

Also I think good idea is to put your VMs vdisks on out of array SSD, not on cache SSD (xfs is much better for running VMs than btrfs). Thing that a lot of newbies lured to unRaid by Linus and his "X gamers, 1 CPU" videos misses when they configure their setups Just install Unassigned Devices plugin, mount SSD not added to array and that's all.

[TyantA]

I think preparing "base" VM helps a lot in the long run so you don't have to start from scratch every time you decide you need another VM with that OS.

 

I have 25GB "base" Win10 VM with all stuff I will need in every VM created out of it (so all updates at the time of creation, devices, drivers, applications like skype, slack, notepad++, windows commander, etc.). It's also activated Win10 so I wouldn't have issues when I clone it (I have several keys from kinguin but only used one so not leeching anything, money got paid).

 

That VM initially had 150GB vdisk but then I realized that's silly because copying that vdisk around takes some time even on ssd. Also not every VM will need so much space. So I cleaned up what I could within Win10 (like 9GB of Windows.old even though I did new clean installation not an upgrade) and got under 20GB with all files. So I shrunk it to 25GB and now I can spawn new "clone" in matter of seconds.

 

Now I have private VM resized to 50GB and work VM resized to 100GB. Also another 50GB VM hosting MSSQL server and IIS I use for my work and private development projects.

 

Also I think good idea is to put your VMs vdisks on out of array SSD, not on cache SSD (xfs is much better for running VMs than btrfs). Thing that a lot of newbies lured to unRaid by Linus and his "X gamers, 1 CPU" videos misses when they configure their setups Just install Unassigned Devices plugin, mount SSD not added to array and that's all.

 

Excellent info. The last part is what I was looking to confirm. About to take the wraps off the first SSD going into my unraid box specifically for a Windows 10 VM. Haven't played *at all* with VMs yet so I hope it's relatively painless. Now I know where to start!

[testdasi]

How did you shrink a VM though?

[bungee91]

xfs is much better for running VMs than btrfs.

 

Do you have any sources or information to back this statement?

I'm genuinely curious, but also have my doubts to the validity of the recommendation.