W2K22 Server - latest version used as a desktop workstation

Hi there

@johngalt

Just trying a new version of Win Server but still working on a doc for this stuff.

BTW if you set the basic disk to "RAW" and "Native" you can speed up the I/O no end assuming you are using KVM as HOST. Using also QXL / Balloon video driver also is probably fast enough for a lot of video games if you haven't got a seperate GPU or even seperate video ports.

In the XML file for the VM config for HDD set the driver name as shown for the HDD.

<disk type="file" device="disk">
<driver name="qemu" type="raw" cache="none" io="native"/> "This line only -- leave every thing else !!!!
<source file="/mnt/DV2/XPVIORAW"/>
<target dev="vdb" bus="virtio"/>
<address type="pci" domain="0x0000" bus="0x00" slot="0x0a" function="0x0"/>
</disk>


The biggest bugbear so far on Server W2K22 is the fact that OPENSSH server doesn't install which is a real pain if you want the server to SEND files to other systems via sftp / ssh. If you can grab hold of a copy of W2K19 Server or even W2K16 server these work brilliantly and will just blow you away regards perforemance compared with current builds of W10.

I've also been messing around with WINXP with SATA and AHCI drivers -- that now boots so fast it really makes W10 look really sluggish. I need that older OS to run Minidisc recording device and also Studio software to create Vinyls -- I'm thinking as the drivers should be similar of trying out W2K3 server as a VM - that in its day was one of the best OS's ever from Ms. I like W2K19 though as well. I can boot the XP VM, compose an email in Outlook 2010 and send it before Office 2019 even starts on W10 !!!!

Mega Mega fast XP system running Minidisc recording session.




And for another bit of Bonkers --love the Escher screensaver - loads of pics from Escher -- "Impossible buildings" etc.



Note also for CLONING the virtual HDD's on these systems simply on the VM add the sata / scsi hdd and boot up say fedora live iso - I use the fedora kde spins iso and simply use the dd command to clone the virtual hdd -- the devices show up as /dev/vda and /dev/vdb.

I did this when I wanted to change the original IDE hdd's to sata / scsi ones with AHCI after updating the XP system to use those HDD's. (dd if=/dev/sda of=/dev/sdb bs=64M status=progress) - then delete the original hdd and boot from the new one.

Cheers
jimbo

Nice. I think I've run into a point of diminishing returns, as with my new build, it's less than 10 seconds to boot Windows 10 after POST has completed. It's the thorough checking in POST that takes my system a long time - but I've set it that way for a reason, I don't want fast POSTs, I want thorough. But XP in a VM loads in flat seconds. Heh - so Does Win10 in a VM on a Win10 Host, for that matter.

I have the CompTIA classroom environment VMs loaded onto my machine for the purpose of helping students work through their exercises, which includes:

• 2x WServer 2016 (1 PDC role, 1 Mail server role)
• 1x Win10 Guest
• 1x Win8 Guest
• 1x Win7 Guest
• 3x VyOS instances (simulating 3 different types of internet connections through different types of connections - local Internet, ISP and a trunk)
• 1x Kali
• 1x LX1 (CentOS 7 with intentional vulnerabilities for testing / troubleshooting)
• 1x LAMP
• 1x PfSense
• 1x SECONION

These are used for A+, Network+ and Security+ classes, although Win8 is only A+.

So you can understand how, if I can get a server OS working with all the apps & drivers that I both need and want working as well, I'll be ion a much better position. I do game occasionally, but don't want to have ot dual boot Win10 and WinServer if I can avoid it.

Another thing I've toyed with (and am still researching) is to use a bare metal hypervisor like ProxMox, as it would allow me to reference a bare-metal install of an OS as if it were a VM (not just pass-through - I mean that I can actually have a fully installed a version of Windows (server or desktop) on bare metal, install ProxMox (obviously to a separate Physical HD), and access the Win install either as a VM from inside of ProxMox or boot directly into the OS, from my understanding of how it works. But the downside of that is that I cannot set up those VMs above the way that CompTIA wants them set up in ProxMox - which means I'd still need a Win10 / WinServer install somewhere and have all that set up. But they would not play nicely being nested inside of ProxMox, I don't believe, so this hybrid VM with a bare metal install really sounds intriguing, provided, of course, that I can get it to work.

Ideally, I'd love to have ProxMox on the machine, and a local bare metal install of WinServer 20xx that I can access dually as noted above, from inside or as a local install. Then, in the WinServer, I could have the VMs set up the way that they should be (with the added benefit of using a real Hypervisor, and thus having the ability to pick the type of Core Scheduler I want ot use, and so much more.

But, it's all moot for now - as I am actively conducting classes and cannot install a new OS at the moment. I can only read and learn lol.

Lol. And then nVidia goes and changes the game.

NVIDIA enables GPU passthrough for virtual machines on GeForce GPUs - VideoCardz.com

I think that this might bring me back to trying out ProxMox as a hypervisor using a bare-metal install on my machine. I suspect it will not take long for the ProxMox team to incorporate this into their builds.

Which GeForce GPUs and Windows OSes support virtualization?
The feature is enabled on all GeForce/TITAN GPUs supported in the R465 driver (Kepler and later for Desktop; Maxwell and later for Notebook) for Windows 10.

Unbelievable they actually enabled it going that far back, but I am NOT going to complain!

This may put a dampener on some people's outlokk, though, because:

Do you need to have more than one GPU installed or can you leverage the same GPU being used by the host OS for virtualization?
One GPU is required for the Linux host OS and one GPU is required for the Windows virtual machine.

The nVidia blog post can be read here: GeForce GPU Passthrough for Windows Virtual Machine (Beta) | NVIDIA (custhelp.com)

Luckily, I have an older 570 I can throw in if I do decide to try this out so that the 970 can be my direct-access GPU for the Windows install.

johngalt said:

Lol. And then nVidia goes and changes the game.

NVIDIA enables GPU passthrough for virtual machines on GeForce GPUs - VideoCardz.com

I think that this might bring me back to trying out ProxMox as a hypervisor using a bare-metal install on my machine. I suspect it will not take long for the ProxMox team to incorporate this into their builds.



Unbelievable they actually enabled it going that far back, but I am NOT going to complain!

This may put a dampener on some people's outlokk, though, because:



The nVidia blog post can be read here: GeForce GPU Passthrough for Windows Virtual Machine (Beta) | NVIDIA (custhelp.com)

Luckily, I have an older 570 I can throw in if I do decide to try this out so that the 970 can be my direct-access GPU for the Windows install.

Hi there
@johngalt

I think also if you have 2 ports on a GPU you can pass one of them thru so you don't always need 2 GPU's. You need two output slots -- not just "Dual monitor capability". So long as these are independent ports then it will work -- not if one of the ports just duplicates what the other sends.

Ensure also Host CPU in its BIOS has VTX enabled (or the AMD eqiuvalent) and also for passthru ensure IOMMAX is on if you have the option in BIOS. On Linux also enable in Kernel boot parameters that IOMMAX=ON or similar depending on your host system.

I really went a bit Bonkers today with 2nd level (Nested VM's). You can get a 32 Bit OS as HOST to run a 64 BIT OS as a Guest - provided of course that the CPU is 64 bit capable and again Host + Guest can't use more than 4GB RAM.

Was quite fun seeing a 32 bit standard XP system running a W10 Pro x-64 Guest !!!! So I had HOST Arch Linux-->VM1 XP SP3 and post SP3 updates and installed VMWare workstation rel 12 (the last 32 bit version) on it then -->VM2 Win 10 X-64 on VMWare !!! -- Not mega performance but it worked. !!!!

Well we're all a bit Bonkers these days until we get back to a bit more "Post Covid Normal Working" again.

Cheers
jimbo

According to the blog from nVidia, for this new GRD implementation, it specifically says one GPU for Linux and One GPU for Windows.

Which makes me wonder - if anyone has a Titan card (dual GPUs on a single card) I wonder if that would qualify? Hmmmm

As for the 32bit host running a 645 bit guest - lol nice! That would have been fun to play around in. Not that I'd actually do it on a regular basis, but hey, if it works, cool!

Good night!

As for XP versus 10 for performance - well, it makes sense - the code base has to be staggeringly different.

But, on the flip side, XP also has lack of support for modern technologies, has horrible support for anti-malware (0 native) and has no easy elevation mechanism -0 no sudo and no UAC.

I mean, I managed to get Win XP boot times down to under a minute on a Pentium 200 MHz machine with ... 256 MB RAM and a 3 GB 5400 rpm HDD? Grr, I've forgotten the exact specs - it was right around the time that Fedora Core 2 or 3 was released. With all the addons for anti-virus and such, it was still something stupidly long like 45 seconds to a minute and a half, whereas my first install of FC 2 (or 3, which ever it was - I'll just call it 2) was not much faster, until I recompiled a custom kernel using some of Con Kalivas' patches for the kernel and leaving out all the optional modules that I didn't need loaded....then the boot time was well under 20 seconds.

(As you've no doubt guessed, I am already addicted - and have been for decades)....

johngalt said:

Good night!

As for XP versus 10 for performance - well, it makes sense - the code base has to be staggeringly different.

But, on the flip side, XP also has lack of support for modern technologies, has horrible support for anti-malware (0 native) and has no easy elevation mechanism -0 no sudo and no UAC.

I mean, I managed to get Win XP boot times down to under a minute on a Pentium 200 MHz machine with ... 256 MB RAM and a 3 GB 5400 rpm HDD? Grr, I've forgotten the exact specs - it was right around the time that Fedora Core 2 or 3 was released. With all the addons for anti-virus and such, it was still something stupidly long like 45 seconds to a minute and a half, whereas my first install of FC 2 (or 3, which ever it was - I'll just call it 2) was not much faster, until I recompiled a custom kernel using some of Con Kalivas' patches for the kernel and leaving out all the optional modules that I didn't need loaded....then the boot time was well under 20 seconds.

(As you've no doubt guessed, I am already addicted - and have been for decades)....

Hi there

I think the whole subject of Malware these days is vastly overblown - the name of the game is scamming - who really is going to hack an old mom and Pop type of home computer to attempt to hose it up when there's much bigger pickings around -- hacking into infrastructure, cyber war, Denial of Service to big corporations etc. A lot of "panic mode" for HOME (not Enterprise stuff - that's a different ballgame) is generated by some of those 3rd party Anti Virus companies e.g Malwarebytes, kaspersky etc etc who made decent products in C20 when Windows security was about nil and hacking etc was all the rage. Things have moved on these days - and XP can be kept perfectly safe as a VM if its internet system if you need to access the net goes via the HOST gateway -- mine is on Arch Linux - and any Linux distro has sensible security anyway.

BTW to replicate a Windows VM on KVM/QEMU without needing Windows to re-activate - even if moving / copying to another machine copy the Virtual Disk(s) and the relevant config file (xxxx.xml) in /etc/libvirt/qemu where xxxx is the name of your VM. Then on the new machine you can simply power on the VM. The important bit is to copy the uuid which if it changes can sometimes cause Windows to get a bit aggressive and ask for (re-) activation.

BTW on XP I got photoshop (32 bit) working fine --the last one before adobe went for all that subscription stuff (Photoshop CS6 update 13.01) and an old program I really found great --paperport -- this can run on W10 but I'm not paying for a new licence !!!



I'm trying to "poodlefake" Photoshop to run on W2K19 server -- bit of debugging needs to comment out a block of code in amtlib.dll which seems to make an activation check. Also requires visual C++2010 runtime which might / might not install -- will test that later.

I haven't done this stuff for ages but its quite addictive.
The best way to get a proper XP system working is to use "XP Black edition" (shhh !!!!) which has all the sata type drivers in it from the start -- you can get it from the software archive - there aren't any "nasties" in it - I've checked a few times -- I buildt mine from my own technet SP3 iso - but checked components against the Black edition to see if I was missing any drivers etc. !!

My problem with current Windows 10 (the insider builds - especially the recent ones) is that performance on these varies from just about acceptable to really poor in spite of the fact I've got fast hardware, decent GPU's for passthru, and fast disks. I suspect there's a huge amount of "debugging / analytical" stuff being collected -- you can sort of replicate the effect that has by compiling a Linux kernel and put all sorts of debugging and logging in it . !!!!!!!


One thing you might like to do with VM's if teaching students is to make them "Non persistant" so each student can use their own Virtual machine and you don't have to re-create the base one again at the end of the class / session.

The problem though with that is anything requiring a re-boot loses all the changes -- what would be nice would be to have a logger for individual changes for the VM which after a re-boot could update changes made before the re-boot. _ Sort of working like a sensible database system after any crashes etc, Playing a log shouldn't be the worlds most difficult thing to do.

Cheers
jimbo

WRT to hacking: social engineering. An example is a great write up in this article: Social engineering explained: How criminals exploit human behavior | CSO Online

You have to realize that malicious actors are scouring the internet for vectors into those high-profile locations and websites. The best way is through the reduced security that individual users use on their machines.

It's why there has been a *massive* rise in large system and corporate / enterprise system attacks over the last year - so many more people were working through reduced security systems, aka working from home.

Think of it this way - they may not be out to get you directly, say, trying to hack your bank accounts and whatnot for tens of thousands of dollars, when they could be hacking someone like Acer for 50 Million. But they *will* start at the bottom of the ladder and move their way up - and you could very well be that bottom rung.

While I do have some fond memories of using XP, knowing now what I know, I'd never use it again, because I tried to run as a limited user on XP - it was entirely too disruptive.

Besides, if hacking at the individual level was not an issue, Linux user would be running as root all the time.

Now, I realize that you're not actually that dismissive of personal security, and your words were tongue-in-cheek humor, for the most part - but in case anyone else reads this, I wanted to make sure that they realize that the threat is a very real one - you never know what connections you might have to someone that can give a malicious actor the vector they need to hit the really big payoff. You even said it yourself - Linux has sensible security - for a reason.

And yes, I know you're running it in a VM, and it's much easier to run it that way, as you can clearly control any and all access. I still maintain that it was a poorly designed OS for home users - they should never had access to an OS that, for all intents and purposes, has the end user running with full, unrestricted admin level privileges by default.

As for personal security being overblown - I won't argue with you about it,but rather just agree to disagree, because I wholeheartedly disagree with your statement about it being overblown. If anything, I believe there is not enough focus on personal security, especially with the advent of IoT and the disaster that it is unleashing on the public without the public even being aware of it. And that is just one facet.

OK, that all being said, let's get back to the addictive things

Thanks for the tip on migrating the VMs in Linux - actually shouldn't be a problem for me, as I can either 1) just log in with my M$ account and it should re-activate just fine, or 2) if it doesn't because it knows it is in a hypervisor environment, I can simply activate with a replacement Windows 7 TechNet key (I have quite literally gobs of them that are all still valid as the vast majority of them were never actually used in any machine, ever - I installed Win7 Ultimate edition solely during my time using Win7, so all the Pro, Pro N and Ultimate N keys are still there waiting to be used - and they can still be used to install Win 10 and get upgraded easily. Currently I have Win10 installed to bare metal, so a swap to a Linux distro or ProxMox hypervisor as the bare metal install will *probably* mean I need to cleanly install Windows as a guest in a VM, especially since I use the Windows trick to move \Users to another physical location - restoring that dual HD setup in a VM is not impossible, but can be tricky, and it's just easier to cleanly reinstall in the first place.

Good job on the Photoshop and paperport installs - pretty cool! I don't use either, I use Paint.net for basic photo editing, and that's about it, and I don't remember ever using PaperPort (except with a scanner, once, perhaps) so I'll have to go back and look at it and see what I do for my own workflows that mimics that app.

LMFAO at 'poodlefake' - I'm going to start using that term, never heard that one before. But it sounds like you've got your work cut out for it regarding that install on 2019. GL!

As for the current insider builds, and particularly system speeds, I no longer do live installs of them - I'm currently working my way up to having a few VMs for testing and whatnot, like @Kari does for his own testing and such, using multiple VMs, but currently I only have the regular 20H2 installed on my machine. Once I get this whole hypervisor / Linux distro bare metal install strategy ironed out the way that I want, with the features, needs and desires that I want, I'll start setting up more of those guests to play with the Insider builds. When I was doing it previously, it was a live install on my old hardware - so it was extremely hard for me to discern if there were any slowdowns, because everything was already slow. On this new rig, though, nothing is slow, which is why it's so darned easy to cleanly install Windows, over and over again, on bare metal lol.

I'll have to look into the non-persistent thing you're referring to. Currently, in Windows 10 Hyper-V the VMs are set up with a base checkpoint so that after any manipulation / messing around, you just load the checkpoint and et voila it's back to where it needs to be. I assume you mean this in a non Hyper-V setup, which I'll definitely have to take a closer look at to see if there is a way to do it a lot better. I do plan to document all of the things that I find in my quest to have the ultimate hypervisor setup for all of my purposes on this single machine. We'll see how it goes.