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So you are looking to create your own Windows Template for your Kimsufi Server? Well, keep reading because i will be explaining how you can do that yourself using Proxmox. This tutorial will be detailed and with screenshots, so you can’t go wrong, can you? 

Do you need help? Send me an email at [email protected]

Things you will need:

• Dedicated server or a KVM VPS with Proxmox installed (VirtualBox will also work though, but I will be using Proxmox with this tutorial).
• VPS or Server  with at least 5GB of available disk space. (Your Computer or Laptop will also work of course, but a server is usually faster when it comes to network performance)
• Windows ISO (e.g. Windows Server 2012 R2, Windows 8/8.1).
• Ubuntu ISO (or any Linux that allows to run from RAM) to create a dump of the Windows disk.

Make sure to have the ISO’s uploaded to the “/var/lib/vz/template/iso” directory on your Proxmox install.

Let’s go ahead and create a new VM at Proxmox:

 

At “Name” you can fill in anything you’d like.

Now click the “Next” button and you will see the following screen:

Click on the OS you’d like to install and click “Next” again.

You will see the following screen:

Select the ISO you would like to install. We will be using the Windows 8.1 ISO for this tutorial.

Click “Next” once again, and you will see the following screen:

Just leave everything by default except the disk size, change that to 20GB which is just enough to cover the Windows install (a small disk size like this will reduce the time of the disk dump later on).

Click “Next” again and you will see the following screen:

Any amount of cores will do, you can leave everything on default. I chose 4 cores, you can set the “type” to “host” if you’d like, but it’s not a requirement.

Click “Next” again and you will see the following screen:

Set the RAM/Memory allocation to at least 1024 MB, I have set it to 2048 MB just for the sake of it.

Guess what? Click “Next” again 

You will see the following screen:

Select “NAT mode” so we do not have to config the network later on when we’re going to make a dump of the Windows disk with Ubuntu.

Click the “Next” button again and you will see the following screen:

Click the “Finish” button now and it will create the VM 

On the upper right corner you will see a “Start”  button () Click on that to start the VM, now click the “Console” button to get to the console, a new screen will pop-up.

Wait for the Windows install to begin and follow the instructions to install Windows. Almost everyone knows how to install Windows right? It’s not that hard
For the people that do not know how to install Windows just follow the instructions and screenshots below

Click “Next” and you will see a screen with a “Install Windows” button, click that and you get to a screen with License terms, accept it and click “Next”.
Once you’ve clicked Next you will see a screen where you can choose between an upgrade or a custom install (see screenshot), click on the Custom Install.

The installer will now ask you where you want to install Windows, just click the “Next” button.

Windows will now start installing:

Once done the VM will reboot and you will see the following screen (or similar on Windows 7, Windows Server 2008 (R2), Window Server 2012 (R2) etc):

Click “Next” again, and configure Windows to your liking.
Once that’s all done, you will see your desktop, now follow the following steps.

Go to the Control Panel and disable the Firewall:

Now, let’s enable Remote Desktop. Go to This PC –> Properties, it will open a new window, click on “Remote Settings” on the left. It will open a new window, enable everything I have enabled:

Now click “Apply” and “OK”

If you’re using Windows 7 or 8/8.1 you may also want to change some settings at the power options. Make sure that “Turn of the display” is set to “Never”.

Now let’s shutdown the VM and mount the Ubuntu ISO (Any linux will do, but we’ll be using Ubuntu for this tutorial).

Go back to Proxmox, select your VM and click on the “Hardware” button. Now double click on “CD/DVD Drive” and select your Ubuntu ISO, after that click the “OK” button. Now click on the “Options” button, double click on “Boot order” and at the pop-up screen change “Boot Device 1″ to CD-ROM, click on “OK” once again.

Now start your VM again, make sure to open the Console by pressing on the “Console” button. Wait till the Ubuntu install screen is loaded and click on the “Try Ubuntu” button.

Once Ubuntu is loaded, open up the Terminal:

Once the Terminal has opened we will be inserting a few commands there. First one is “sudo -i” without the quotes to make ourself the root user.

Now create a new directory: “mkdir /mnt/temp”. Once that is done install SSHFS using “apt-get install sshfs”. Now, you will need a VPS or Server with at least 5GB disk space available. We will be uploading the template to that server while we are dumping the disk.

Now mount the external storage using the following command: “sudo sshfs root@YOURVPSIP:/home /mnt/temp”
Once that is done create a DD (dump) of the disk using the following command: “dd if=/dev/sda | gzip -1 | dd of=/mnt/temp/WindowsTemplate.gz”

If you’ve done everything correctly you will see the same things at the terminal as in the screenshot:

This can take a while, so get a coffee, thea or whatever you like and come back in about 15-20 minutes (this depends on the speed of your server and network, could take longer, but could also take less than 15 minutes).

Once it’s done, the template will be available for use on your Kimsufi server. You can use my tutorial on how-to install Windows on a Kimsufi Server to install your own, freshly created, Windows template. Just replace the link/url of the .gz file with your own link/url.

Enjoy