#Installing Guest Tools (Guest Agent, VirtIO Drivers, vTPM)

Installing the right tools inside the guest unlocks features the platform relies on — reporting the IP address, graceful shutdown, application-consistent snapshots, and (for Windows) usable disk and network drivers.

#QEMU guest agent

The QEMU guest agent lets the platform read the guest IP, shut the guest down gracefully, and freeze the filesystem for application-consistent snapshots. Without it, online snapshots are only crash-consistent.

• Linux — install and enable the agent from the distribution packages:

  # RHEL / CentOS / Fedora
  sudo dnf install -y qemu-guest-agent && sudo systemctl enable --now qemu-guest-agent
  # Debian / Ubuntu
  sudo apt-get install -y qemu-guest-agent && sudo systemctl enable --now qemu-guest-agent

• Windows — install the guest agent from the virtio-win media (guest-agent\qemu-ga-x86_64.msi).

When the agent is running, VirtualMachineInstance.status.conditions includes AgentConnected=True and the IP address appears in the console and in status.interfaces.

#VirtIO drivers (Windows)

Windows has no built-in VirtIO drivers, so a freshly installed Windows guest cannot see its VirtIO disk or NIC until the drivers are installed. Attach the virtio-win container disk as a CD-ROM and install the drivers:

• During Windows setup, Load driver from the virtio-win CD-ROM (viostor for the boot disk).
• After installation, run virtio-win-guest-tools.exe from the same media to install all drivers plus the guest agent.

#Virtual TPM (vTPM)

Windows 11 and BitLocker require a TPM 2.0 device. Add a virtual TPM to the virtual machine through spec.template.spec.domain.devices.tpm:

spec:
  template:
    spec:
      domain:
        devices:
          tpm: {}
        firmware:
          bootloader:
            efi:
              secureBoot: true   # Windows 11 also requires UEFI + Secure Boot

Note that a vTPM's persistent state is not included in virtual machine snapshots or clones.