cocoon

Windows Guests

Running Windows VMs with the cocoonstack Cloud Hypervisor and firmware forks.

Overview

Cocoon supports Windows guests via the --windows flag:

cocoon vm run --windows --name win11 --cpu 2 --memory 4G --storage 15G <cloudimg-url>

The --windows flag:

• Forces UEFI firmware boot (cloudimg path)
• Enables Hyper-V enlightenments (kvm_hyperv=on)
• Skips cloud-init cidata disk generation (Windows does not use cloud-init)

Requirements

• Cloud Hypervisor v51+ with our CH fork (includes DISCARD fix, virtio-net ctrl_queue fix, and upstream patches — see known issues)
• UEFI firmware from our firmware fork (includes ResetSystem fix for ACPI power-button — see known issues)
• virtio-win 0.1.285 drivers pre-installed in the image (0.1.240 also works for any version of Cloud Hypervisor; newer versions are supported with our CH fork)

Image

Pre-built images and build automation are maintained in cocoonstack/windows.

The Windows image is published as an OCI artifact (split qcow2 parts pushed via ORAS), not a runnable OCI container image — use oras pull (not cocoon image pull or docker pull).

# 1. Pull split parts via oras (https://oras.land)
oras pull ghcr.io/cocoonstack/windows/win11:25h2

# 2. Reassemble and verify
cat windows-11-25h2.qcow2.*.qcow2.part > windows-11-25h2.qcow2
sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS

# 3. Import into Cocoon
cocoon image import win11-25h2 windows-11-25h2.qcow2

Post-Clone Networking

• DHCP networks: no action needed, Windows DHCP client auto-configures
• Static IP: configure via SAC serial console (cocoon vm console)

For more details, see the Cloud Hypervisor Windows documentation.

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