What is virtio and why you should use it
Virtio is an I/O virtualization framework for Linux that provides a standardized interface for virtual machines (VMs) to access simplified devices such as block devices and network adapters. Virtio devices are implemented using a combination of virtqueues, which are data structures for exchanging data between the host and the guest, and feature bits, which are used to negotiate the capabilities of each device.
Virtio devices offer several benefits over emulated devices, such as improved performance, reduced CPU overhead, and lower latency. By using virtio devices, you can achieve near bare-metal levels of I/O throughput and efficiency in your VMs. Virtio devices are also extensible and compatible with various hypervisors, such as KVM, Xen, and VMware.
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In this article, you will learn more about virtio devices and drivers, how to download and install them for Windows guests, how to use them for existing devices, and how to troubleshoot common issues.
Virtio devices and drivers overview
Virtio devices and drivers are the main components of the virtio framework. They work together to enable paravirtualized communication between the host and the guest.
Virtio devices: In and out the virtual world
A virtio device is a device that exposes a virtio interface for the software to manage and exchange information. It can be exposed to the guest environment using PCI, Memory Mapping I/O, or S/390 Channel I/O. Its main task is to convert the signal from the format they have outside of the virtual environment (such as electricity or light from a NIC) to the format they need to be exchanged through the virtio dataplane and vice-versa.
Virtio devices can be either emulated or physical. Emulated devices are software implementations of common hardware devices, such as disks or network cards. Physical devices are actual hardware devices that support virtio natively or through a driver in the host kernel. For example, some NICs have a virtio driver in Linux that allows them to be used as virtio devices by VMs.
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Currently, virtio supports the following types of devices:
Block (disk drives)
Network (ethernet cards)
Console (serial ports)
Balloon (dynamic memory management)
SCSI (SCSI host bus adapter)
9P (file system sharing)
RNG (random number generator)
GPU (graphics processing unit)
Input (keyboard and mouse)
Crypto (cryptographic accelerator)
Memory (memory hotplug)
Virtio drivers: Paravirtualized drivers for Windows guests
A virtio driver is a driver that implements the virtio interface for a specific device type in the guest OS. It allows the guest OS to communicate with the virtio device using virtqueues and feature bits. A virtio driver consists of two parts: a frontend driver in the guest OS and a backend driver in the host OS.
Windows does not have native support for virtio devices included. However, there are open source drivers available that are compiled and signed for Windows by Red Hat. These drivers are called virtio-win and they work with Windows 7, 8, 8.1, 10, and Server 2008, 2012, 2016, and 2019. They support the following device types:
viostor (block device)
netkvm (network device)
vioscsi (SCSI device)
vioserial (serial device)
balloon (memory balloon device)
viorng (random number generator device)
viocrypto (crypto device)
vioinput (input device)
viogpu (GPU device)
How to download virtio drivers for Windows
To use virtio devices in your Windows VMs, you need to download and install the virtio-win drivers. There are two ways to do this: downloading the ISO file from Fedora or using the online repository.
Downloading the ISO file from Fedora
The ISO file contains all the virtio-win drivers for different Windows versions and architectures. You can download it from the Fedora website or use the direct link. The file size is about 400 MB and the file name is virtio-win.iso.
Mounting the ISO file in a virtual CD-ROM/DVD drive
After downloading the ISO file, you need to mount it in a virtual CD-ROM/DVD drive in your Windows VM. You can use any virtualization software that supports ISO mounting, such as VirtualBox, VMware, or Hyper-V. Alternatively, you can use a third-party tool like WinCDEmu or Daemon Tools to mount the ISO file in Windows.
Installing the virtio drivers using the wizard or manually
Once you have mounted the ISO file, you can install the virtio drivers using the wizard or manually. The wizard is a graphical user interface that guides you through the installation process. It is located in the root directory of the ISO file and it is called virtio-win-gt-x64.msi for 64-bit Windows or virtio-win-gt-x86.msi for 32-bit Windows. To use the wizard, simply double-click on it and follow the instructions.
If you prefer to install the drivers manually, you need to locate the driver files for your specific device type and Windows version. The driver files are organized in subdirectories of the ISO file according to the device type and Windows version. For example, if you want to install the viostor driver for Windows 10 64-bit, you need to go to the viostor\w10\amd64 subdirectory and find the viostor.inf file. To install the driver manually, you need to right-click on the .inf file and select Install.
How to use virtio drivers for existing devices
If you already have a Windows VM with emulated devices and you want to switch them to virtio devices, you need to edit the libvirt configuration file of your VM and change some attributes. You also need to remove the address tag of your devices to avoid conflicts.
Editing the libvirt configuration file
The libvirt configuration file is an XML file that defines the properties and settings of your VM. You can find it in /etc/libvirt/qemu/ with the name of your VM as the file name. For example, if your VM is called windows10, then your configuration file is /etc/libvirt/qemu/windows10.xml. To edit it, you need to use a text editor such as nano or vim.
Changing the bus and target attributes
To change your emulated devices to virtio devices, you need to change the bus and target attributes of your devices in the configuration file. The bus attribute specifies which bus type your device uses, such as ide, scsi, or virtio. The target attribute specifies which device name your device uses, such as hda, sda, or vda.
For example, if you have an emulated disk device with these attributes:
You need to change them to these attributes:
Similarly, if you have an emulated network device with these attributes:
You need to change them to these attributes:
Removing the address tag
The address tag specifies the physical address of your device on the bus. However, it can cause conflicts when you switch to virtio devices, as the virtio devices may have different addresses than the emulated devices. To avoid this, you need to remove the address tag of your devices in the configuration file. For example, if you have this address tag:
You need to delete it from the configuration file.
How to troubleshoot virtio drivers issues
Sometimes, you may encounter some issues with virtio drivers, such as missing drivers, outdated drivers, or incompatible drivers. Here are some tips on how to troubleshoot these issues.
Checking the driver version and compatibility
One of the common causes of virtio drivers issues is having an incorrect or incompatible driver version for your device or Windows version. To check the driver version and compatibility, you can use the following steps:
Open the device manager in Windows by pressing Windows + X and selecting Device Manager.
Find your virtio device under the appropriate category, such as Disk drives or Network adapters.
Right-click on your virtio device and select Properties.
Go to the Driver tab and check the driver version and date.
Compare the driver version and date with the latest version available on the Fedora website or the online repository.
If your driver is outdated or incompatible, you need to update or reinstall it using the methods described in the previous section.
Using the device manager to update or reinstall drivers
If you need to update or reinstall your virtio drivers, you can use the device manager in Windows to do so. You can use the following steps:
Open the device manager in Windows by pressing Windows + X and selecting Device Manager.
Find your virtio device under the appropriate category, such as Disk drives or Network adapters.
To update your driver, right-click on your virtio device and select Update driver. Then, choose Browse my computer for driver software. Navigate to the location where you have downloaded or mounted the ISO file containing the virtio drivers. Select the appropriate subdirectory for your device type and Windows version. Click Next and follow the instructions.
To reinstall your driver, right-click on your virtio device and select Uninstall device. Check the box that says Delete the driver software for this device. Click Uninstall. Then, click on Action and select Scan for hardware changes. Windows will detect your virtio device and prompt you to install the driver. Choose Browse my computer for driver software. Navigate to the location where you have downloaded or mounted the ISO file containing the virtio drivers. Select the appropriate subdirectory for your device type and Windows version. Click Next and follow the instructions.
Contacting the support channels or forums for help
If you still have issues with virtio drivers after trying the above methods, you may need to contact the support channels or forums for help. You can find the following resources online to get assistance from the virtio community or experts:
The virtio-win mailing list, where you can subscribe and post your questions or issues related to virtio-win drivers. You can also browse the archives of previous messages and discussions.
The virtio-win bug tracker, where you can report bugs or request features for virtio-win drivers. You can also view the status and comments of existing issues.
The virtio-dev mailing list, where you can subscribe and post your questions or issues related to virtio devices and drivers in general. You can also browse the archives of previous messages and discussions.
The virtio-spec mailing list, where you can subscribe and post your questions or issues related to the virtio specification and standards. You can also browse the archives of previous messages and discussions.
The libvirt-users mailing list, where you can subscribe and post your questions or issues related to libvirt, the virtualization API that manages virtio devices and drivers. You can also browse the archives of previous messages and discussions.
The libvirt bug tracker, where you can report bugs or request features for libvirt. You can also view the status and comments of existing issues.
The Stack Overflow website, where you can ask and answer questions related to virtio devices and drivers using the virtio tag. You can also search for existing questions and answers on the same topic.
The Reddit website, where you can join and participate in subreddits related to virtio devices and drivers, such as r/virtio, r/libvirt, or r/virtualization. You can also search for existing posts and comments on the same topic.
Conclusion
Virtio is a powerful and versatile framework for I/O virtualization that enables high-performance and efficient communication between the host and the guest. By using virtio devices and drivers, you can improve the I/O throughput and latency of your Windows VMs, as well as reduce the CPU overhead and memory footprint. Virtio devices and drivers are also compatible with various hypervisors and operating systems, making them a flexible and portable solution for virtualization.
In this article, you have learned what virtio devices and drivers are, how to download and install them for Windows guests, how to use them for existing devices, and how to troubleshoot common issues. You have also learned about some useful resources online where you can get more information and help about virtio devices and drivers.
We hope that this article has helped you understand virtio better and that you will enjoy using it in your virtualization projects. If you have any feedback or suggestions, please feel free to contact us or leave a comment below.
FAQs
Here are some frequently asked questions about virtio devices and drivers:
What is the difference between virtio-blk and virtio-scsi?
Virtio-blk and virtio-scsi are two types of block device drivers that support virtio devices. Virtio-blk is a simple driver that provides basic disk operations, such as read, write, flush, trim, etc. Virtio-scsi is a more advanced driver that supports SCSI commands, such as inquiry, mode sense, report luns, etc. Virtio-scsi also supports features such as multipathing, device passthrough, SCSI reservations, etc.
How do I enable multiqueue for virtio-net?
Multiqueue is a feature that allows multiple queues to be used for a single virtio-net device, improving the network performance by distributing the load across multiple CPUs. To enable multiqueue for virtio-net, you need to do two things: set the number of queues in the configuration file of your VM using the vectors attribute, and set the number of queues in the guest OS using the smp_affinity parameter. For example, if you want to use 4 queues for your virtio-net device, you need to add this line in your configuration file:
And then run this command in your guest OS:
echo f > /sys/class/net/eth0/queues/rx-0/smp_affinity echo f0 > /sys/class/net/eth0/queues/rx- 1/smp_affinity echo f00 > /sys/class/net/eth0/queues/rx-2/smp_affinity echo f000 > /sys/class/net/eth0/queues/rx-3/smp_affinity
How do I enable virtio-gpu for Windows?
Virtio-gpu is a GPU device driver that supports virtio devices. It allows you to use hardware-accelerated graphics in your Windows VMs, such as DirectX or OpenGL. To enable virtio-gpu for Windows, you need to do three things: add a virtio-gpu device in the configuration file of your VM using the video element, install the virtio-gpu driver in your guest OS using the viogpudo.inf file, and enable the 3D acceleration feature in your virtualization software. For example, if you use VirtualBox, you need to check the box that says Enable 3D Acceleration in the Display settings of your VM.
How do I enable virtio-input for Windows?
Virtio-input is an input device driver that supports virtio devices. It allows you to use advanced input devices in your Windows VMs, such as keyboards, mice, touchscreens, tablets, etc. To enable virtio-input for Windows, you need to do two things: add a virtio-input device in the configuration file of your VM using the input element, and install the virtio-input driver in your guest OS using the vioinput.inf file. For example, if you want to use a virtio-keyboard device, you need to add this line in your configuration file:
How do I enable virtio-crypto for Windows?
Virtio-crypto is a crypto device driver that supports virtio devices. It allows you to use hardware-accelerated cryptographic operations in your Windows VMs, such as encryption, decryption, hashing, etc. To enable virtio-crypto for Windows, you need to do two things: add a virtio-crypto device in the configuration file of your VM using the crypto element, and install the virtio-crypto driver in your guest OS using the viocrypt.inf file. For example, if you want to use a virtio-crypto device with AES-256-GCM algorithm, you need to add this line in your configuration file:
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