FreeNAS 11 BHYVE Graphical drivers for Windows 10

[RAurelian]

Well, I updated to FreeNAS 11.1 U1 and now regardless how I set up the VM, Windows 10 install freezes half-way though.. At least in 11.0 U4 I was able to install Windows 10, but it would BSoD any time a program would try to invoke anything 3D. So this new virtualization system is a major step back from phpVirtualBox and I`m sorry I upgraded from 9.3.. It`s a shame that something completely functional was pulled out in favor of something that does not even come close..

 

[Chris Moore]

Yes. I liked PHP Virtual Box also and ran many VMs that way. The developers don't regularly monitor the forum though, so if there is a bug, you need to open a bug report.

 

[RAurelian]

Yes, I know. However, I just do not have time right now to waste with this and as far as I know there is something like this in the bug list which was meant to be fixed in 11.1, but was pushed back and back. Since the base code of bHyve is created by someone else, they depend on that code and I doubt that the creators have the will or incentive to develop for and fix issues that affect Windows on bHyve until it reaches proper stability to be used more than a novelty or hobby.

I`m just disappointed that a perfectly working solution (that really added to FreeNAS` value and use cases) was cut out and replaced with a half-baked one that cannot even run some Linux distributions stably (as I understand from many other posts), let alone Windows.

If and when I will have the time, I will use it to try and install PHP Virtual Box in a jail manually and see if that works the way it used to and if it does, stick to it for the foreseeable future.

 

[RAurelian]

In case anyone is curious: I managed to finally get a Windows 10 VM running if I installed it with just 1 CPU and no devices, except VNC, HDD (AHCI) and CD (so no NIC!). After it got installed, I installed all of the VirtIO drivers I could install + I added the following System Tunables in the FreeNAS GUI:
(Type: Loader) hw.vmm.topology.cores_per_package: 4
(Type: Loader) hw.vmm.topology.threads_per_core: 2

After this, I allocated 6 CPUs and it works OK. I could also allocate 2 NICs (VirtIO) without issues.

It now has Blue Iris running happily for almost a month, constantly recording without any stability problems - YAY :)

 

[Chris Moore]

I managed to finally get a Windows 10 VM running

Would you mind documenting all the steps, or did you follow a guide? It could be a lot of help to someone else later.

 

[RAurelian]

Sure.

OK, so to start from the beginning, I tried setting up a BHYVE Windows VM (tried 7, 8 and 10) starting with FreeNAS 11.0 U4. In that version, I was able to get Windows 8 and 10 installed, but would crash as soon as I started any application that required any kind of 3D acceleration. Even if I left Windows idling at the desktop, eventually it would just crash. I did try to install all of the VirtIO drivers, but it would still crash no matter what.

Then I tried in FreeNAS 11.1-U1 and Windows 7/8/10 would just freeze during the installation at various percentages or steps. I stopped trying and said I would wait for FreeNAS 11.1-U2, but that was late to be released so with ~2 days before FreeNAS 11.1-U2 came out i decided to try again on FreeNAS 11.1-U1 as I was desperate - and it worked. After FreeNAS 11.1-U2 was released I tried again with the exact same steps and it worked without issues again. So the steps that worked for me were:

1. The following System Tunables have to be added in the FreeNAS GUI and FreeNAS restarted:
   
   Code:

   (Type: Loader) hw.vmm.topology.cores_per_package: 4
   (Type: Loader) hw.vmm.topology.threads_per_core: 2

2. Using the old GUI, I set up a VM (VM type: "Virtual machine")
3. At Virtual CPUs, I used just 1 vCPU
4. Memory: 4096
5. Boot Method: UEFI
6. Autostart: not during the testing phase, but Yes for the final VM that now has been running for over 3 weeks
7. Went to the devices tab and removed the NIC. All I used with the VM at first were a VNC device with 1920x1080 resolution, an AHCI disc and 2 CDROMs: one pointing to the Windows 10 Pro x64 ISO installer (created with Windows Media Creation Tool) and another one pointing to the virtio-win-0.1.141 ISO.
8. Powered on the VM - it would not boot directly, so I exited from the UEFI shell and manually selected the proper disc image in the VM`s UEFI/BIOS interface. Followed the normal steps to install Windows (as you can imagine, it will take quite some time with just 1 vCPU).
9. After Windows has finished installing, I fully updated it and rebooted as necessary. I also turned off all of Windows` Visual Effects in Control Panel (System Properties -> Advanced -> Performance -> Adjust for best performance)
   
10. After this I manually installed all of the applicable drivers off the virtio-win-0.1.141 ISO.
11. Then I also installed the latest available spice-guest-tools (https://www.spice-space.org/download.html)
12. Powered off Windows and allocated 6 vCPUs. Also, I added 2 NICs (VirtIO), each bridged to another NIC on the host. I removed the CDROM with the Windows ISO, as well as the one with the VirtIO drivers. I added 6 new 2TB discs (AHCI as VirtIO would result in BSoD, unfortunately).
13. Powered ON the Windows VM, and configured my NICs and formatted my drives
14. Installed the application I needed (in this case it was Blue Iris), set it up to record from all my cameras on the various HDDs as needed - all on one of the NICs - while providing a web server for them on the other NIC.

Right now this Windows 10 VM has been working non-stop for almost a month with the exception of FreeNAS reboot a few days after setting it up (manually powered off the OS in the VM, but it started automatically after FreeNAS rebooted).

So at this point I am pretty happy with this VM as I was able to replicate all of the functionality I had in PHPVirtualBox. If I had to complain, I`d say that VNC or RDP to the VM is slower than it was in PHPVirtualBox, but at least it works and it does not crash..

The VirtIO drivers can be downloaded from here: https://docs.fedoraproject.org/quic...ws-virtual-machines-using-virtio-drivers.html / I used the ISO from in here: https://fedorapeople.org/groups/vir...ownloads/archive-virtio/virtio-win-0.1.141-1/

The Spice Guest Tools can be downloaded from here: https://www.spice-space.org/download/windows/spice-guest-tools/spice-guest-tools-latest.exe

And this is pretty much it. I hope it will help someone else too.