Guest Agents

overview the guest agent is a program installed inside the guest os allowing the host to run commands within the vm this allows consistent, reliable backups by freezing the guest file system before snapshots and proper shutdown of a guest without reliance on acpi, policies, etc requirements enable the guest agent for the vm installation of the guest agent within the guest operating system enable the guest agent the guest agent must be enabled per vm; this can be done during vm creation or by editing an existing vm from the top menu , click virtual machines > list select the desired vm from the left menu, click edit select qemu guest agent click submit install the guest agent windows vms during the vm creation process there is an option to attach virtio drivers this option will automatically attach a virtual cd rom drive to the guest os with the required virtio installation files if this option was not selected, you can still download the guest agent installation iso from https //fedorapeople org/groups/virt/virtio win/direct downloads/stable virtio/virtio win guest tools exe from the top menu , click virtual machines > list select the desired vm from the left menu, click remote console from the top menu click to launch the change cd menu select the desired virtio win iso file click submit log in to the windows guest os click start > run type devmgmt msc to launch the device manager right click on pci simple communications controller click update driver click browse my computer for drivers click browse browse to the path of the cd rom drive containing the virtio drivers navigate to x \vioserial\\\<os version> click ok click next in the windows file explorer, browse to the cd rom drive containing the virtio drivers navigate to the guest agent folder run the msi installer for your os architecture qemu i386 msi qemu x86 64 msi architecture 32 bit (ia 32) 64 bit (x64/amd64) address space 32 bit (max 4gb ram) 64 bit (16 exabytes) performance generally slower generally faster compatibility runs on 32 bit guests runs 32 bit & 64 bit guests modern usage niche, legacy systems default for most use cases a restart of the guest os may be required to connect the agent to the host linux vms on linux virtual machines, the qemu guest agent package must be installed installation instructions will vary depending on your specific linux distribution on systems that use apt for installation (debian/ubuntu) apt get install qemu guest agent on systems that use yum (red hat) yum install qemu guest agent some distributions may require a reboot or manual start of the agent systemctl start qemu guest agent verify guest agent connection when a guest agent is successfully connected, the version number will display next to the guest agent checkbox on the vm dashboard