As a Linux sysadmin, sometimes you might end-up in a situation where you install a Linux distro as a Guest OS on a Windows based Virtualization software.

In those situations, it is helpful to understand some basics of Windows virtualization technologies.

Windows Server 2012 and Windows Server 2012 R2 provided major improvements to the Hyper-V role, including increased consolidation of server workloads, Hyper-V Replica, Cluster Aware Updating (CAU), network virtualization and the Hyper-V extensible switch, just to name a few! Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 R2 is now ready for management with Windows Admin Center. Port configuration on the target server Windows Admin Center uses the SMB file sharing protocol for some. New in Windows Server 2012 R2 is Automatic Virtual Machine activation. This is a feature, and it only works when the Datacenter edition is installed as the management operating system. You still get the privileges even if you don’t install Datacenter, but the automatic licensing tool won’t be available. We have a Hyper-v VM running Windows server 2012 R2 which is used as a file share server. Recently the VM has had issues with the network adapter believing the connection was 'Limited'. When it enters the Limited connectivity state, we are unable to disable/re-enable the network adapter as it just hangs, the server is still usable.

Hyper-V is a Windows Server Virtualization based on Hypervisor technology, which enables virtualization on x86-64 systems.

Microsoft Hyper-v Download

The following are two high-level requirements to install Hyper-v server:

• The physical server must be a 64-bit environment
• The physical server must support hardware-assisted virtualization (Intel VT or AMD-V) technology. Make sure to enable virtualization in the server BIOS.

Types of Hyper-V Server

Hyper-V exists in two variants:

1. Hyper-V server (free stand-alone version),
2. As an installable role in Windows Server 2012, Windows Server 2008 R2, Windows Server 2008, and the x64 edition of Windows 8 Pro.

In this tutorial, we’ll explain how to install the Hyper-V server free stand-alone version. The following are few points to keep in mind about the Hyper-V server:

• Hyper-V server is free stand-alone version.
• It is a variant of the core installation of Windows Server 2008/ Windows 2012 version that includes full Hyper-V functionality. In the free version other Windows Server roles are disabled, and there are limited Windows Services.
• The free Hyper-V Server is limited to a command-line interface (CLI), Configuration of the “Host” or “Parent” (Hyper-V Server) OS, physical hardware and software is done using shell commands.
• A new menu driven CLI interface does simplify initial configuration considerably, and some freely downloadable script files extend this concept.

Accessing Hyper-V Core from GUI

Performing administration tasks is little bit difficult in the core edition, as it is done through CLI in the command prompt. You can preform pretty much all the tasks, but you should do this inside the server from the CLI/Command prompt.

To avoid this painful task of dealing with CLI, you can perform the administration tasks of the core server (configuration and VM installations) from another server using one of the following methods:

• Use another Windows 7 or Windows 8 machine with (Microsoft management consoles)
• Use another Windows server 2008 or Windows server 2012 with Hyper-v role installed
• Use System Centre Virtual Machine Manger (scvmm)

Follow the steps below to install the Hyper-V server (free stand-alone version):

1. Enable VM in BIOS and Launch Install

Before starting installation you need to enable Virtualization option in BIOS.

Download the Hyper-V server from here, and burn it on a disk. Boot the server with Hyper-v Server boot CD, and select OS language and keyboard language.

2. Install Now and Accept License

Click on the “Install Now” button to start installation and Accept the license agreement as shown below.

3. Choose Upgrade or Custom Option

If it detects a previous installation of Hyper-V, it will give you an option to Upgrade or to start a fresh install.

Click on “Custom” here.

4. Select Disk Drive to Install

Select drive to install Hyper-V server and allocate the Drive space as per your requirement. While creating partition by default windows will create some additional partitions to store boot file.

5. Installing Hyper-V

Once the drive partitions created successfully press next button to start installation. This will start installing Hyper-V and display the progress on the screen as it moves along various installation steps. During the installation process, the server will automatically reboot twice.

6. Post Install Command Line Tools

After completing the installation we will get the following two command line tools to perform basic tasks in Hyper-v server.

1. The standard Windows Command prompt to perform administrative tasks
2. Server Configuration (CLI) – This command window will help us to configure and change servers settings like System name, Network IP, Firewall, etc.

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Applies To: Azure Stack HCI, version 20H2; Windows Server 2019, Hyper-V Server 2019, Windows Server 2016,Hyper-V Server 2016, Windows Server 2012 R2, Hyper-V Server 2012 R2, Windows10, Windows 8.1

The following feature distribution maps indicate the features that are presentin built-in and downloadable versions of Linux Integration Services. The knownissues and workarounds for each distribution are listed after the tables.

The built-in Red Hat Enterprise Linux Integration Services drivers for Hyper-V(available since Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.4) are sufficient for Red HatEnterprise Linux guests to run using the high performance synthetic devices onHyper-V hosts.These built-in drivers are certified by Red Hat for this use.Certified configurations can be viewed on this Red Hat web page: Red HatCertificationCatalog.It isn't necessary to download and install Linux Integration Services packagesfrom the Microsoft Download Center, and doing so may limit your Red Hat supportas described in Red Hat Knowledgebase article 1067: Red Hat Knowledgebase1067.

Because of potential conflicts between the built-in LIS support and thedownloadable LIS support when you upgrade the kernel, disable automatic updates,uninstall the LIS downloadable packages, update the kernel, reboot, and theninstall the latest LIS release, and reboot again.

[!NOTE] Official Red Hat Enterprise Linux certification information isavailable through the Red Hat CustomerPortal.

In this section:

Table legend

• Built in - LIS are included as part of this Linux distribution. Thekernel module version numbers for the built in LIS (as shown by lsmod,for example) are different from the version number on the Microsoft-providedLIS download package. A mismatch does not indicate that the built in LIS isout of date.

• ✔ - Feature available

• (blank) - Feature not available

RHEL/CentOS 8.x Series

RHEL/CentOS 7.x Series

This series only has 64-bit kernels.

RHEL/CentOS 6.x Series

The 32-bit kernel for this series is PAE enabled. There is no built-in LISsupport for RHEL/CentOS 6.0-6.3.

RHEL/CentOS 5.x Series

This series has a supported 32-bit PAE kernel available. There is no built-inLIS support for RHEL/CentOS before 5.9.

Notes

1. For this RHEL/CentOS release, VLAN tagging works but VLAN trunking does not.

2. Static IP injection may not work if Network Manager has been configured fora given synthetic network adapter on the virtual machine. For smoothfunctioning of static IP injection please make sure that either NetworkManager is either turned off completely or has been turned off for aspecific network adapter through its ifcfg-ethX file.

3. On Windows Server 2012 R2 while using virtual fibre channel devices, makesure that logical unit number 0 (LUN 0) has been populated. If LUN 0 has notbeen populated, a Linux virtual machine might not be able to mount fibrechannel devices natively.

4. For built-in LIS, the 'hyperv-daemons' package must be installed for thisfunctionality.

5. If there are open file handles during a live virtual machine backupoperation, then in some corner cases, the backed-up VHDs might have toundergo a file system consistency check (fsck) on restore. Live backupoperations can fail silently if the virtual machine has an attached iSCSIdevice or direct-attached storage (also known as a pass-through disk).

6. While the Linux Integration Services download is preferred, live backupsupport for RHEL/CentOS 5.9 - 5.11/6.4/6.5 is also available throughHyper-V Backup Essentials forLinux.

7. Dynamic memory support is only available on 64-bit virtual machines.

8. Hot-Add support is not enabled by default in this distribution. To enableHot-Add support you need to add a udev rule under /etc/udev/rules.d/ asfollows:

9. Create a file /etc/udev/rules.d/100-balloon.rules. You may use any otherdesired name for the file.

10. Add the following content to the file: SUBSYSTEM'memory', ACTION'add', ATTR{state}='online'

11. Reboot the system to enable Hot-Add support.

While the Linux Integration Services download creates this rule on installation,the rule is also removed when LIS is uninstalled, so the rule must be recreatedif dynamic memory is needed after uninstallation.

1. Dynamic memory operations can fail if the guest operating system is runningtoo low on memory. The following are some best practices:

• Startup memory and minimal memory should be equal to or greater than theamount of memory that the distribution vendor recommends.

• Applications that tend to consume the entire available memory on a systemare limited to consuming up to 80 percent of available RAM.

Microsoft Hyper V 2012 R2

1. If you are using Dynamic Memory on a Windows Server 2016 or Windows Server2012 R2 operating system, specify Startup memory, Minimum memory,and Maximum memory parameters in multiples of 128 megabytes (MB).Failure to do so can lead to hot-add failures, and you may not see anymemory increase in a guest operating system.

2. Certain distributions, including those using LIS 4.0 and 4.1, only provideBallooning support and do not provide Hot-Add support. In such a scenario,the dynamic memory feature can be used by setting the Startup memoryparameter to a value which is equal to the Maximum memory parameter. Thisresults in all the requisite memory being Hot-Added to the virtual machineat boot time and then later depending upon the memory requirements of thehost, Hyper-V can freely allocate or deallocate memory from the guest usingBallooning. Please configure Startup Memory and Minimum Memory at orabove the recommended value for the distribution.

3. To enable key/value pair (KVP) infrastructure, install the hypervkvpd orhyperv-daemons rpm package from your RHEL ISO. Alternatively the package canbe installed directly from RHEL repositories.

4. The key/value pair (KVP) infrastructure might not function correctly withouta Linux software update. Contact your distribution vendor to obtain thesoftware update in case you see problems with this feature.

5. On Windows Server 2012 R2 Generation 2 virtual machines have secure bootenabled by default and some Linux virtual machines will not boot unless thesecure boot option is disabled. You can disable secure boot in theFirmware section of the settings for the virtual machine in Hyper-VManager or you can disable it using Powershell:

Microsoft Hyper-v 2012 R2

• Set-VMFirmware -VMName 'VMname' -EnableSecureBoot Off

  The Linux Integration Services download can be applied to existingGeneration 2 VMs but does not impart Generation 2 capability.

Microsoft Hyper V 2012 R2 Download

1. In Red Hat Enterprise Linux or CentOS 5.2, 5.3, and 5.4 the filesystemfreeze functionality is not available, so Live Virtual Machine Backup isalso not available.

See Also