Windows 10: Macrium restore of a QUEMU / KVM W10 VM

Hi folks

One of the great things with QEMU/KVM VM's is that you can boot from physical devices INSIDE THE VM (and not just ISO's)-- I needed to restore a W10 VM as I'd hosed it up with some silly networking parameter errors etc.

With the latest kernels you can Hot plug USB devices to the VM's now (I'm on HOST kernel 5.4.8)

So easy what to do now to restore via Macrium :

1) BEFORE booting the VM attach both the bootable media USB (usually a USB stick made bootable with Rufus) and the USB HDD containing your backup image. I.E WHILE THE VM IS STILL RUNNING -- you'll see the devices come up in the standard Windows notification area --what should you do with the device -- open with file explorer etc.

2) now re-boot (ensure that the boot menus display option has been set -- you can do that before re-booting the VM)

3) when the VM Bios appears hit esc to show menu

4) select the Macrium USB stick as the boot option --you should also see the other USB drive containing the restore image as well in the boot menu !! don't boot from that one !!

5) now it works identically to a physical machine

6) Run restore job

7) Job done !!!!!














Cheers
jimbo

:)

 

Restoring Windows 10 Image using Macrium Reflect


In addition to the above. Here's my suggestion in step by step.
I assume you have Macrium Installed in your current HD and already made a backup copy.

1. Connect your new HD via USB port and boot up.
2. Run Macrium, click on Restore tab then select the Backup Image that you made to restore
3. click on "select a different target disk" then select your new HD as destination
   
   
   
4. Proceed to restore then Shutdown and disconnect the old HD and replace with the new HD
5. Boot up with your new HD.

 

KVM - Windows 10 VM running with IE


Hi there

Here's another VM running under KVM -- W10 showing IE running on it.





Cheers
jimbo

 

KVM Host --W10 VM with HYPER -V running another VM (Nesting)


Hi there.

It seems some CPU's will handle HYPER-V in a VM running on a Host where a HYPERVISOR (KVM in this case) is already running.
One needs to make a few mods otherwise booting up the VM running UNDER the HYPER-V (the 2nd level VM) will freeze.

I'm currently playing with this -- it looks like some modules from QEMU need to be updated -- and one needs to use IOMMU to get any sort of decent I/O throughput - even on SSD's.

I'll post back when I've got some better results -- note I haven't a CLUE about AMD CPU's . I think also getting USB and SOUND on to the second level VM could be a problem. PCI passthru is pretty easy from the KVM Host to the Windows VM (ist level) but passing that to the second level VM is proving somewhat problematical.

(HOST --CENTOS 7 with KVM, ist level VM W10 pro with HYPER-V enabled, second level VM W7 ultimate -- all x-64 machines).

I believe also performance can be improved by switching from Full virtualisation to "Para virtualision" on the guests -- easily enough done with settings in KVM - but then passthru gets a bit ????.

Anyway I've got some time to play with all this --when I'm done I'll post a guide. It should work also for most other common Linux distros capable of running KVM.

Tip - don't use the libvirt manager GUI as a console for your VM's as once in Full screen you can't always get back to Windowed mode -- might be my mouse etc. Use RDP / VNC instead -- no problem connecting to VM's even if you are running the VM's on your local machine.

Cheers
jimbo