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Hello there.
I got vm eve-ng (8 vCPU, 32 gb RAM) on ESXi 5.5u3 with Xeon E7-4850 (eve 2.0.3-68). EPT is on, so nested virtualization support is enabled. Furthermore, afaik windows host wouldn`t start in eve-ng if EPT disabled.
With unetlab I imported windows image from vSphere and it was totally OK, so I decide to use the same method with eve-ng. So:
1. I created the windows vm, installed windows 7x86, vmtools (don`t think its needed in eve-ng tho), MS kbs, some 3d party software (like tftpd, nmap, wireshark, browsers, etc). Also made some modifications like disabling firewall, IPv6 and sleep mode.
2. upload vmdk (descriptor) and flat vmdk (the disk itself) into eve-ng vm.
3. convert vmdk to qcow2 (/opt/qemu/bin/qemu-img convert -O qcow2 -f vmdk input.vmdk output.qcow2).
4. mv hda.qcow2 to previously created floder /opt/unetlab/addons/qemu/win-7pro-x86.
5. fix permissions with unl_wrapper.

The windows host is running fine in lab now. But the performance is really poor, I haven`t experienced such problems in unetlab. The startup of vm takes about 3-4 minutes and 1 more minute to load user profile. Whats wrong? Should I adjust some options during adding windows node in lab such as qemu version/arch or custom options?

I'm very surprised about you affirmation: unetlab was able to run windows machine faster....

It is a nonsense, both Unetlab and Eve use the same qemu engine.....

So to be clear, a lot of things can modify the speed of a VM:

CPU/Disk, qemu options.....

Win7 64bit is slower than Win7 32bits. indeed, so using virtio driver can help a lot ! For such type of setup, download virtiodrivers for this you need to be a good hacker to boot a virtioa disk for windows and a floppy disk with virtio driver

Or wait for PRO, for a automatically floppy provided on qemu windows templates...

E.

Hello there.
I`m trying to follow your advice and use virtio drivers but I`m totally confused what should I do.
Okay, windows host x64 was converted from vmdk to qcow2 and started for the first time. Some drivers, packaged with windows OS, was installed successfully (e.g. for intel e1000). Now I want to install virtio drivers but I don`t know for which devices. Here are some virto drivers I got:
1. Balloon driver. It says here that this driver is for PCI standard RAM Controller. BUT there are no such device in "System devices" (yeah, the hidden devices are shown).
2. vioserial is for PCI Simple Communication Controller, BUT there are no such device too.
3. NetKVM if for virtio-net-pci device, so there is no point to use it with intel e1000.
4. viostor is for block driver if a virtio disk is configured. I don`t know what disk is configured but windows says that driver is up to date if I try to update it.
5. vioscsi. Windows says the same as for viostor, that the driver is up to date and do not install this driver.
6. guest agent. If i got it right its like vmtools in vSphere, so I can interact with guest OS from hypervisor level (e.g. correct restart/shutdown from outside the guest OS). Don`t think it is useful in my case.
7. qemupciserial - no idea what is this for.
8. qxl - video? Windows says that there is nothin to update.
9. qxldod?
10. vioinput?
11. viorng?

Tell me please, where can use all these virtio drivers. It seems that there is no devices in qemu host that could use these drivers.

First advice is install Windows from ISO...then will be ok.
Like real, create qcow hdd, then install windows from ISO.
How to is given how to...

UD