Best Practices For Building Windows 11 VMs in VMM?

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1

Good morning! I would like to create a Windows 11 VM in Virtual Machine Manager. I am currently running Fedora Kinoite. What are considered to be the “best practices” for building these VMs?

  1. Should I use VirtIO drivers whenever possible for the storage, display, and networking drivers? Or would I be better off leaving “SATA” for the disk bus for storage?

  2. What UEFI firmware option should I choose in VMM?

  3. Should I enable the “Hyper-V Enlightenments” in the VMM XML that SysGuides recommends? Will it actually help or harm the speed of the VM?

  4. Should I set the svm policy flag inside of the VMM XML? I have an AMD Ryzen AI 9 HX370.

  5. Should I turn on Core Isolation inside of the Windows image? Is it true that this should only be turned on for Intel processors?

  6. What are some other common pitfalls for creating Windows 11 VMs that I should try to avoid?

Many thanks in advance for your assistance!

2

Just google for the answer. Like this How to install Windows 11 in QEMU - Computernewb Wiki or ask qemu install win11 and read AI answer, there is a video as well.

3

I have “googled the answer”. My issue is that although there are some excellent guides out there for installing VMM and building W11 VMs - the ones from Trafotin and SysGuides in particular stand out - there are some minor differences in how people recommend building their VMs. I am therefore looking for feedback from users here that have built their own W11 VMs so I can try and optimize my VM/OS settings for maximum performance.

4

I used the following guide to install W11 on VirtualBox: Como instalar o Oracle VirtualBox no Fedora Linux 41

You can use browser builtin translator.

5

Here are my notes I what I did to setup my Windows 11 VM.

  1. Start virt-manager
  2. File/New Virtual Machine
  3. Select “(*) Manual install” - Forward
  4. Type “Windows 11” and select “Microsoft windows 11” - Forward
  5. Set Memory and CPUs to your needs - win 11 needs atleast 2 CPUs -
  6. Forward
  7. Select of crate custom storage. Click Manage and select your .qcow image - Forward
  8. At Step 5 of 5 select “ Customise configuration before install” - Finish
  9. Click on “TPM vNone”.
    a) Type should be emulated
    b) Open Adavanced options
    c) Set Model: to TIS and Version: to 2.0
    d) Apply changes.
  10. If converting from VMWare VM then click on NIC: …
    a) Change the MAC address to match the value from your VMware config
    b) It’s in the .vmx file for your VM and it the "ethernet0.generatedAddress. Apply changes.
  11. Check that in “Overview” the Firmware is UEFI.
  12. Click “Begin Installation” at the top of the window.
6

Based on the responses I have received thus far, let me re-summarize and simplify my question for clarity:

  1. I have successfully installed VMM and all of its required components.

  2. I have successfully created a W11 VM.

  3. I do not want to use VMWare or VirtualBox, and I am not importing an image from either of those systems.

TL; DR: What settings can I change within VMM or the W11 VM itself in order to improve the performance of the W11 VM?

NOTE: Note: I have already disabled SuperFetch, turned off Windows Web Search in the registry, and Visual Effects have been set to “Adjust for best performance”.

7

Have you installed the spice drivers into windows vm?
They are needed to allow cut and paste between the host and guest.

8

No you didn’t. Otherwise you would just start with the first one to see that it works. qemu runs w11 from the very beginning. Provided you use qemu/kvm, after several messages it is still unknown to us.

9

LOL ok “Alf”.

Thankfully, I was able to find the answers I sought elsewhere. Kind of surprising, given that this is supposed to be the official Fedora support forum, but it is what it is…

10
  1. In your browser, download the virtio-win ISO from Github
  2. Create a WIndows 11 VM by setting the OS type to Windows 11
    1. This will automatically configure the “Hyper-V” Enlightenments, so no need to configure the xml manually
  3. On Step 5 of 5 of New VM creation select Customize Configuration before install
  4. On Overview, make sure Chipset is set to “Q35” and Firmware is set to “UEFI”
  5. In the bottom Left, Click on Add Hardware
    1. Under Storage, click on “Select or create custom storage
    2. Select Browse Local on the bottom right and navigate to the virtio-win ISO
    3. Set Device Type to “CDROM device” and Bus Type to “SATA”
  6. Best performance will be given by the following configuration:
    1. VirtIO disk type
    2. VirtIO network interface
    3. VirtIO Inputs
    4. Spice Display
    5. Video QXL
  7. When the Windows ISO boots, it wont detect any disks.
    1. Click Load Driver
    2. Select the virtio cdrom and expand the folder
    3. Select amd64/win11 then hit OK
    4. Install the VirtIO SCSI driver and continue with the OS Install as normal
  8. After installation, there will be no network detected because the rest of the drivers are not installed. You can install the required drivers in Audit mode or after creating a local account. I will detail the steps in audit mode.
    1. Hit Ctrl+Shift+F3 to enter audit mode, the VM will restart and automatically login to the Administrator user and show a window titled System Preparation Tool
    2. Do not close the Sysprep window, if you do just reboot and it will enter audit mode again
    3. Open the VirtIO CD using the FIle Explorer
      1. Scroll to the bottom and run virtio-win-gt-x64.msi and install all features
      2. Enter guest-agent and run qemu-ga-x86_64.msi
      3. Enter spice-vdagent and run spice-vdagent-x64.msi
      4. Enter qxl-wddm-dod and run QxlWddmDod_x64.msi
    4. Now close File Explorer and focus the Sysprep window
      1. Set System Cleanup Action to “Enter System OOBE”
      2. Set Shutdown Options to “Reboot” and Click “OK”
  9. Congrats you’re done
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