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Proxmox QEMU Guest Agent

The qemu-guest-agent is a helper daemon, which is installed in the guest. It is used to exchange information between the host and guest, and to execute command in the guest.

In Proxmox VE, the qemu-guest-agent is used for mainly three things:

  1. To properly shutdown the guest, instead of relying on ACPI commands or windows policies
  2. To freeze the guest file system when making a backup/snapshot (on windows, use the volume shadow copy service VSS). If the guest agent is enabled and running, it calls guest-fsfreeze-freeze and guest-fsfreeze-thaw to improve consistency.
  3. In the phase when the guest (VM) is resumed after pause (for example after shapshot) it immediately synchronizes its time with the hypervisor using qemu-guest-agent (as first step).

Installing on Linux

In the Linux Terminal run the following to install the QUMU Guest Agent and start the service.

on Debian/Ubuntu based systems (with apt-get) run:

sudo apt install qemu-guest-agent

and on Redhat based systems (with yum):

yum install qemu-guest-agent

Depending on the distribution, the guest agent might not start automatically after the installation.

Start it either directly with

sudo systemctl start qemu-guest-agent

Then enable the service to autostart (permanently) if not auto started, with

sudo systemctl enable qemu-guest-agent

Windows

First you have to download the virtio-win driver iso (see Windows VirtIO Drivers).

Then install the virtio-serial driver:

  1. Attach the ISO to your windows VM (virtio-*.iso)
  2. Go to the windows Device Manager
  3. Look for "PCI Simple Communications Controller"
    34 Right Click -> Update Driver and select on the mounted iso in DRIVE:\vioserial\\ where is your Windows Version (e.g. 2k12R2 for Windows 2012 R2)

After that, you have to install the qemu-guest-agent:

  1. Go to the mounted ISO in explorer
  2. The guest agent installer is in the directory guest-agent
  3. Execute the installer with double click (either qemu-ga-x86_64.msi (64-bit) or qemu-ga-i386.msi (32-bit)

After the install is successful

Shut the system down and go to Proxmox .
In the Options for the VM Enable Qemu Guest Agent.

Start the Virtual Machine back up. If all went as planed you should see IP information populated on the Summary tab for the VM

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