Windows VPS

Setting up

If the customer has bought a VPS with a Windows license, we need to do a few extra steps:

1. Log in to the physical node the customer has bought a VPS on.
2. The user's Xen account might not exist, so type something like useradd --home /var/lib/dtc-xen/ttyssh_home/xenXX -m -s /usr/bin/dtc-xen_userconsole -g xenusers xenXX where XX is the VPS number.
3. Type ln -s /usr/share/dtc-xen-hvm/Windows_*.iso /var/lib/dtc-xen/ttyssh_home/xenXX/ where XX is the VPS number.
4. If /usr/share/dtc-xen-hvm looks to be empty run mount -a to remount it and check again

Performing Windows Install for Customer

Each user is entitled to ask us to install Windows for them. We used to copy across a pre-created Windows disk image but this proved to be unreliable. Unfortunately, you will need to go through the same process as the user in order to install Windows on their VPS.

1. In the Installation section for the VPS in DTC, set the Operating System to 'Xen HVM' and press 'Reinstall Operating System'. Don't forget a root password, although this is probably ignored.
2. Press the Installation link again on the right and then select the Windows ISO in the Boot device section. Set the VNC password and select Yes for 'VNC console activation' and select Write Parameters
3. The page will refresh and you should be able to boot up the VPS using the Boot Up button.
4. You can connect via VNC to the VPS to install Windows. The address is nodeXXXXX.gigatux.com:YY where YY is the VPS number within DTC, and the password the one just set. Warning: The mouse does not behave properly in the VNC window
5. When installing Windows, the default options should be fine, but select Custom rather than upgrade (upgrade puts you out of the installer sometimes).
6. Once installed it will ask for a password. Sticky keys can be an issue as the VNC window interprets holding down the key as tapping it which makes using Shift tricky.
7. Once into Windows, log out and log in to make sure the password still works before going on. If it doesn't, you may have to start over.
8. The network card needs to be set up for the VPS via the control panel, it should be the only network card listed and needs to be set as a static IP. The required IP settings can be found on the IP Ranges page.
9. Enable remote desktop too (and use it from this point on).
10. Install the Signed drivers for the network card as below. This is important as otherwise networking takes up a large amount of CPU unnecessarily using the standard windows drivers.
11. Activate Windows. The license keys can be found in Setup -> Email Templates within WHCMS for the different Windows flavours available. The default key needs to be changed however. On Win2k8 this is a button press within activation page. On Windows 2012 however you may need to run 'slui 3' as an administrator to get to the GUI to let you set a new License Key.
12. Finally, enable automatic windows updates and run an initial update to get critical security patches.

Signed Drivers

Signed PV drivers are available at the official Xen site. The latest version does appear to work, even in Xen Hypervisor 4.1. All 5 packages look to be necessary

You will need a tar extractor and 7-Zip does the job.

An archived copy of the 8.2.0 drivers is available as a single zip file at https://jdrcomputers.co.uk/xennetdrivers.zip

The process is:

1. Run the executable from all five tar archives and complete the install.
2. Then turn off the server VPS.
3. Change the Xen configuration and remove the type=ioemu but from the vif directive and the disk directive. eg.
   

   vif = [ 'type=ioemu, mac=00:16:3e:a2:00:28, ip=208.100.57.69, bridge=eth0' ]
   disk=[ 'phy:/dev/mapper/lvm1-xen28,ioemu:hda,w','file:/var/lib/dtc-xen/ttyssh_home/xen28/Windows_2012.iso,hdd:cdrom,r' ]

   becomes

   vif = [ 'mac=00:16:3e:a2:00:28, ip=208.100.57.69, bridge=eth0' ]
   disk=[ 'phy:/dev/mapper/lvm1-xen28,hda,w','file:/var/lib/dtc-xen/ttyssh_home/xen28/Windows_2012.iso,hdd:cdrom,r' ]

4. Turn on the VPS again.
5. You may need to log in via VNC and it will offer to reset for you again. Do this.
6. You may need to reconfigure the networking. I didn't on my last test.

Nebula

1. The virtual driver needs to be set up as <Marc to fill in>
2. Attach the Windows ISO in the nebula config. This may take a while to do as the image is copied over (so whilst in prologue for example it is likely still copying), and the VM cannot be booted until this is complete
   1. Make sure the disks are attached as hd in the advanced options. hda will be taken by the actual main OS drive, so hdb and hdc for the windows and virt IO disks should work
3. Also attach the windows Virt IO CD
4. Once the play icon is no longer greyed out, click that to boot the VM and install windows as normal
5. Once into windows, go into device manager and install all the unknown devices using the loaded up VirtIO CD
6. The network card needs setting up with the shown IP, and the other details as per IP Ranges
7. Enable remote desktop, and connect in using that to be sure it works
8. Validate windows using key in WHMCS