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I downloaded signed drivers available here:
http://nimbula.com/forum/topic/48/

Installing VirtIO drivers on a KVM image already containing an install of Windows Server 2008:

1. Starting from an installed Windows Server 2008 image running in a KVM virtual machine
2. Install VirtIO network driver
     1. Power off guest
     2. Change guest CDROM to point to VirtIO driver ISO image
     3. Change network virtual device type to VirtIO
     4. Power on guest
     5. Go in device manager, find Ethernet Device with ! icon, right click and select "Update Driver Software ..."
     6. Click on "Browse my computer for driver software"
     7. Select D: CDROM device then Next button, wizard should find the correct driver and install it.
3. Install VirtIO SCSI disk driver
     1. From the powered off guest, select add disk - choose 1GB, don't allocate entire disk now, device type VirtIO.
     2. Change guest CDROM to point to VirtIO driver ISO image
     3. Power on guest
     4. Go in device manager, find Ethernet Device with ! icon, right click and select "Update Driver Software ..."
     5. Click on "Browse my computer for driver software"
     6. Select D: CDROM device then Next button, wizard should find the correct driver and install it.
     7. Check that the disk is recognized, look for it in "Administrative Tools" -> "Server Manager" -> "Storage" -> "Disk Management"
     8. Shut down guest
     9. Swap the disk image to using virtual device type VirtIO
    10. The guest should power on to using C: with VirtIO.

Optimally, VirtIO drivers can also be loaded during the installation of Windows Server 2008 if the virtual machine is configured with the VirtIO floppy image. (see below)

Edited jeremy (June 18, 2012 13:51:58)

The steps are not clear to me. For example, I don't have guest account (as suggested in Step 2.1.) in my Window Server 2008 image which is running in a KVM virtual machine. I am not sure how to power off it or to change guest CDROM to point to VirtIO driver ISO image.

nazmul@bohesolutions.com
The steps are not clear to me. For example, I don't have guest account (as suggested in Step 2.1.) in my Window Server 2008 image which is running in a KVM virtual machine. I am not sure how to power off it or to change guest CDROM to point to VirtIO driver ISO image.

Perhaps the easiest would be to install Windows from scratch in a KVM virtual machine running on Ubuntu 10.04 with virt-manager, and with the VirtIO virtual floppy present. This VirtIO floppy image is attached to this forum thread, see below.

When you boot the Windows Server install ISO, (with the VirtIO virtual floppy connected) you should be prompted to use the VirtIO disk and network drivers. This would ensure that you use the VirtIO drivers from the start, yielding to best performance.

Once the installation is completed, power off the virtual machine, and you can tar and upload the image like described at page 32 in the user guide.

Our documentation is available here: http://nimbula.com/support/resources/

I hope this clarifies things.

Edited jeremy (March 2, 2012 09:30:14)

To expand Jeremy's last option - which is the quickest way to do it.

In this case, en_windows_server_2008_r2_with_sp1_x64_dvd_617601.iso is your installer disc, and windows.raw is your final KVM image.

Create an empty sparse RAW image (this one is 16GB) and download the VirtIO floppy image virtio-win-1.1.16.vfd, see attached below on this forum thread.

dd if=/dev/zero bs=1 count=0 seek=16G of=windows.raw

Start kvm with the install disc, image and floppy with the drivers. Importantly, you have to set boot=on for the image's drive.

sudo kvm -smp 2 -m 1024 -fda virtio-win-1.1.16.vfd -drive file=windows.raw,if=virtio,boot=on -cdrom en_windows_server_2008_r2_with_sp1_x64_dvd_617601.iso -net nic,model=virtio -boot order=d

You will not initially see any suitable drives when installing. Click on the "Load Driver" button and add both the "Red Hat VirtOI SCSI Driver" and the "Red Hat VirtIO Ethernet Adapter Driver" for your distribution.

Proceed with your installation, and set up your image. Shut it down, tar+gzip it and upload it as per usual.

tar -zScf windows.tar.gz windows.raw

Edited jeremy (March 20, 2012 14:48:53)

The VirtIO drivers contained in the attached vfd file are out of date. Use them only for testing, not production. They can expose network outages for the virtual machine under heavy load. As of this writing, there is a recent update on the Fedora site, we recommend using the new drivers from http://nimbula.com/forum/topic/48/, the file name as of this writing is virtio-win-0.1-22.iso.

In the spirit of Ian's previous comment, create the empty sparse RAW image (this one is 16GB):

dd if=/dev/zero bs=1 count=0 seek=16G of=windows.raw

Then the command to start the KVM installation process is the following with the new VirtIO ISO image:

sudo kvm -smp 2 -m 1024 -no-reboot  -boot order=d \
-drive file=windows.raw,if=virtio,boot=off \
-drive file=en_windows_server_2008_r2_with_sp1_x64_dvd_617601.iso,media=cdrom,boot=on \
-drive file=virtio-win-0.1-22.iso,media=cdrom,boot=off \
-net nic,model=virtio

During the installation process, select the Custom (advanced) installation method, and install the 2 following drivers:
1) VirtIO Ethernet Adapter, click Load driver, browse to E:\Vista\amd64
2) VirtIO SCSI controller driver, click Load driver, browse to E:\Wnet\amd64

This should install both VirtIO storage and network drivers.

Once the kvm process exits, simply run the tar command:

tar -zScf windows.tar.gz windows.raw

Edited jeremy (June 18, 2012 13:54:02)

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