Create a Windows 10 Virtual Machine in FreeNAS 11.3 / TrueNAS Core 12.0

When creating a Win10 VM in FreeNAS 11.3 / TrueNAS 12.x, there are three things to look out for:

- Have enough RAM free for the VM
- Use VirtIO drivers
- Use RDP, not VNC, to connect to Windows once installation is done

Note that you can load Ethernet drivers early during install. After loading disk VirtIO drivers, just go into that Driver screen again, "Browse" to NetKVM/Win10/amd64, and choose the Ethernet virtio driver in there. This saves you a few steps during install.

[vincegsm]

More than 4 years later this video is still useful, thanks !

[whyomgwhywtf]

My man!! Easiest walk through to follow ever. I threw 4 cores and 8 gigs of ram and she is cursing along nicely. Thank you for the guide, This needs to be shared on every forum asking how to Win10 on FreeNAS.

Version:
FreeNAS-11.3-U3

[cstorch]

Great job.... It worked perfect. This is clearly one of the best walkthroughs I have ever seen.

[justbored.]

the first 3 minutes of your video have helped me more than me searching in forums for help in the past 6 months.

[SaqlainMisbah]

Much appreciated! After following your video, I was able to successfully install the VM on TrueNas.

[doublecheckityt]

The goal of this for me would be for downloading/uploading videos without needing to run two computers. Performance issues won't bother me at all. Thanks for the video.

[Jobey_]

After adding another CDRom to mount the Virtio drivers and restarting windows still can't find the drivers and when I search manually only the boot cd drive shows up

[aednichols]

I can successfully load up the driver in the Windows installer and select the disk, but as soon as I hit install the VM disconnects VNC and freezes up. TrueNAS-12.0-U3.1 and virtio-win-0.1.190.

[bigben]

This video really helped me out! Thank you

[BekoIQ]

Great job brother, I hope continue to make more videos about freeNas

[CartersRetroReviews]

Yorick, is it possible to create a VM on the boot drive? I have installed TrueNAS to a 256GB SSD I had lying around and I would have thought the performance on the SSD is far better than the large NAS drives I have the drive stored on. And I just know I have tonnes of spare room on that SSD.

What are the advantages of using virtIO Win10 than normal windows 10 iso?

[alainbureau]

Where can I download the appropriate win10 iso for this installation

[justbored.]

i ran into a problem . the system reports i have 14 gb of available ram and zfs is only taking 1.8 gb and the system resources are using 1.9 and i have 11 gb of ram available. no matter what number i enter into value it does not change.

[toddmerritt]

after inputting vfs.zfs.arc.max (1:24)(Truesnas 12.0) and rebooted. server wont boot up. any help or ideas

[addyplate]

Can't get mine to work.. The drivers show up, but say no new devices drivers were found...

[Mike-]

Trying to consolidate my hardware so I only have the freenas running 24/7 to conserve power and heat in my office. Didn't know about the slowness hopefully they get it working in version 12. I plan on doing this need to order more memory maybe by then version 12 will be working.

[stevevlahos]

I have one pc that I RDP into from work. I don’t have a spare pc laying around. Can I backup the whole system, install truenas and then install windows 10 as a VM on that box and eliminate the need to build a separate nas. Can a static ip be given to the windows 10 vm install. If so I may just attempt it. As a side note, I also use the desktop as a plex server. Would it be powerful enough running virtually and transcoding media when needed. Tia

[settepiani]

Will I be abble to connect to this Windows instance via RDP? Thanks.

[degoldenllama]

do you think this would be fast enough to run a coding environment to run a discord bot (simple responses to commands) and maybe more complicated things later down the line