Windows 10: Will W10x64 Hyper-V work on my PC?

As the title says, before I install, I'm wondering if it will work at all. I tried to search and didn't find any specific requirements or list of PCs that are known to work/not work. I have several VMware (ESXi 5.5u3) hosts but was hoping that I could get Hyper-V working on this little box so I could run 1-2 Ubuntu server VMs inside it which would allow me to power down an entire ESXi host.

I realize it may not be a good idea with such little resources... but will it even work? I have two machines I could run Hyper-V on...

1. Dell Optiplex 755 Ultra-Small-Form-Factor, 4gb ddr2, Intel E6850 c2d CPU, Intel 82566DM-2 NIC. My guess says no it won't work on that box...

2. Gateway SX2855 (rebranded Acer box), 4gb ddr3 (could expand up to 8gb) i3-2120 CPU, Intel 82579V NIC

Under programs and features, the 755usff box has Hyper-V Platform, Hyper-V Hypervisor greyed out. The sx2855 has nothing greyed out so I suppose it would install fine?? That is not as ideal as that's my desktop that is shared and prone to reboots from time to time.

Thanks.

EDIT: If you log out of the username running VMs do they stop? Meaning if I have Hyper-V enabled/installed and I'm running a VM with my username and my wife logs me out and logs into her username, does that kill the VMs with the logout?

:)

 

Hyper V

Hyper-V is either installed or not installed. It cannot be disabled.

After I was done experimenting with Hyper-V I deleted my VM and uninstalled Hyper-V. Poof, gone.

Hyper-V worked fine for me, but I still prefer VMWare. Hyper-V works best with Ethernet; it's trickier with WiFi.

 

Running Windows Phone 8 emulator on remote hyper-v server

I typically do my development in a VM running in a Windows 2012 Hyper-V Server. With the Windows Phone 8 SDK, the emulator runs in the local hyper-v install of the Windows 8 pro. That does not work if the main os is running in a hyper-v already. So my
question is, can you change the default hyper-v server of the Windows Phone SDK to run on a different hyper-v installation (like one running on another computer)?

So for instance, the emulator would run off a my remote hyper-v server instead of the development vm it is installed on? If this capability is not allowed default, could someone (thinking of myself) create a plugin to allow for this configuration of the emulator?
Just looking for some guidance as to how the emulator works.

 

I did a little research for you.
From Step 1: Make sure your machine is compatible
"Only the Pro, Enterprise and Education editions of Windows 10 can host Hyper-V virtual machine"
Hyper-V on Windows 10

 

I can tell you straight once you enabled the Hyper-V already included in Windows since 8 you won't be able to run VM ware anything! One simply cancels the other out as far as running the two on the same desktop. I had Hyper-V enabled and then temporarily disabled it to run the latest VM Player projects after trying out the latest releases.

When going to re-enble Hyper-V again it detected VM ware and I then the message appear that Hyper-V couldn't be enabled due to VM Player being on. I now have to uninstall any traces of VM Player before I can go back into the "Control Panel>Programs&Features>Turn Windows features on or off" section to again see the Hyper-V option enabled there. Once you have all the VM ware off and see the Hyper-V enabled a full system start will then be required. Hyper-V virtualization - Setup and Use in Windows 10 - Windows 10 Forums

 

Maybe I stated my question incorrectly...
I am running W10x64 Pro (sorry I did not state that previously) on two machines. I am running ESXi on several other machines (unrelated Dell servers). My power bill is crazy so I am trying to cut down wherever possible. I am trying to run Hyper-V on one of two bare-metal machine running W10x64-Pro. I am wondering if I can enable Hyper-V on a Dell 755usff. I have learned that I CAN run Hyper-V on the Gateway SX2855 box so my question with regards to that machine is:

Is there any way to keep hyper-v running in the background regardless of which user is logged in? I can control reboots (prevent other users from rebooting) but I must allow other users to log in/out of their usernames and, at times, my username (or whatever admin username is running Hyper-V) must log out vs. "switch user". If a user logs out does that kill the VMs running in its profile?

 

From what I have seen as far as VMs you have only one admin account and depending on the OS being run that will play a large role in how that would go. With a Windows VM the task is simply creating the new user account for each person to log into. That would go for running Windows on a VM as you would expect on the desktop. As for keeping a VM running constantly the idea of setting one up and seeing the VHD attached in the Disk Management tool as a boot option is something I still have yet to see while others were seeing that done on 7. Your VM is then turned into a dual boot only seeing the second Windows on a virtual not physical drive.

As far as ESXi you wouldn't be able to run that I highly doubt on Hyper-V while any VMs you see made up may still work however. The reason for that is rather simple since that is VMware ESXi Server there.

Since I re=enabled Hyper-V here again and will be staying with that option since it automatically as I was pointing out before turns VM Player into dust!





Fortunately that was only the 8.1 Enterprise download from TechNet I was only taking a fast look at and nothing long term. Hyper-V offers something previously not seen with either VM Player or VBox in seeing the other OSs connect to the web and possibly see a previous version like 7 activated for 90 or 120 days to run on temp VM projects. But VMware and Hyper-V each want the playing field entirely to themselves not allowing the other to be present is how that goes!

 

Thanks all for the replies. I think I wasn't explaining myself correctly but I found my answers. I stated ESXi experience so that people reading this thread would know that I have experience with virtualization.

Night Hawk, running a hypervisor inside a hypervisor is called nesting. I know that you can run a nested version of Hyper-V inside ESXi (by running an ESXi 5.1u2 or newer Server 2008r2 Virtual Machine with Hyper-V enabled), and you can nest an instance of ESXi inside ESXi. Its tricky and not fully supported, but possible. It looks like within ESXi 6.0 and onward it is actually supported.

This guy is pretty awesome: NESTED VIRTUALIZATION | virtuallyGhetto
Must be nice to work as a VMware R&D engineer. Seems like he pretty much plays all day and tries to break stuff or figure things out.

A quick Google search looks like 2008/2008r2 (and I assume W8/8.1/10) does not yet support nested virtualization. It looks like its a topic for discussion on Server 2016 which means it will probably be possible within whatever OS comes after W10.

To clarify, I am NOT trying to do that (nested virtualization). All I was asking about was whether or not Hyper-V will properly work on the PCs I mentioned. The answer is that Hyper-V will not work on the Dell 755usff as the chipsets are too old. Hyper-V in W 8/8.1/10 will work on the Gateway SX2855 however when you sign out of the username running the virtual machines, the VMs die/logout/power off with the logout of the physical user. The only way I can accomplish what I need is by running the SX2855 24/7 without ever logging out of the machine --at that rate I might as well just install shell/free Hyper-V or ESXi on the bare metal machine and not use it as a desktop.

I need several machines: a desktop, a web server, a WAP controller, a data/file server for ~50tb of data, a syslog server (security onion), a firewall and I'd like a 8.1/10 VM that runs 24/7 that I can access from anywhere. I think I figured out a way to combine the web server, wireless (WAP) controller and Security Onion into one Ubuntu OS... Its a bit messy and not ideal but its working. My thought with Hyper-V & W10 was if I could throw 1-2 Linux VMs on my desktop I could virtualize my firewall, web server, WAP controller and Security Onion all on one tiny machine and save space/power. Reality is that its too complicated and if another user were to reboot or log me out of the machine it would kill all of the Hyper-V instances and shut me down. So my answer is to keep plugging away with ESXi running on servers for now.

Thanks for the replies.

 

A bit off topic and not answering your original questions at all, just an odd curiosity: nested virtualization kind of works in Windows 8, 8.1 and 10 as long as the second level virtualization technology used is not Hyper-V or VMware.

An example: I have successfully run Microsoft Virtual PC and XP Mode on a Hyper-V Windows 7 vm running in Windows 10. Virtual XP in virtual 7 in Windows 10. Also VirtualBox can be installed and virtual machines operated on a Hyper-V vm.

Really useless information only to increase my post count *Wink

 

Maybe it isn't useless if a user has a backup of an XP Mode vm from before a Windows 10 upgrade and can't figure out how to retrieve something from the XP Mode vm. Even an XP Mode vm converted to VMWare on Windows 7 using the included VMWare conversion option won't run in VMWare on Windows 10 after the upgrade. I tried that to my sad surprise. Just speculating here.

 

Well the answer to the question if you can run the virtual machine in the background, is no. Once you logoff Hyper-V will terminate. You could possibly switch user to another account (without logoff the account running the virtual machine) but I am not sure if you can do it in Windows 10 and how. Try searching for that with the search icon. Type switch user and see the results.

 

What I did to have remote access was to stay physical as far as seeing two desktops connected to each other one being portable while a laptop can also join in the way things were set up. I can run VMs as well as other things on the main build while out visiting someone and not leave any log in type information on the laptop. I can also hold video conferencing live between the two desktops and laptops if set up for that as well.

As far as the Dell and a good number of other older now pretty much museum pieces up until the Core 2 and AMD AM2 socket types were seen the support for virtualization in any form was 3rd party ware only. You had limited options. Once the support became hardware things got rolling along much beter making it possible for the VPC and XP Modes as well as the continued advancements being seen in this area.

Since 7 and 10 seem to be playing in different ball parks between Hyper-V and VM ware which is an option for both I wasn't looking to nest anything here either while still needing to see a virtual network created. At one time I could run multiple VMs at the same time but not seen now with either VM Player or Hyper-V while now running with 16gb and no worries of "out of resources" problem when having 4gb on 7 when first new.

That was seen on the old Vista build I had upgraded just prior to seeing the 7 beta builds go on expecting 7 to need more ram when in actuality no version since Vista has actually seen the need to increase the minimum while VM projects starting off at 2gb are a concern with only 4gb installed. The upgrade to 8gb would certainly be a plus factor for the Gateway.

As far as restoring things from VMs Cbarnhorst that would be another interesting project to take on since it has been found even when seeing a second clean install of the same version of Windows with the exact same release of VM Player or VBox you can't always get the previous install's VMs to work again. Yet an upgrade of the program typically sees the previous program version's VMs run without issues. I suspect some registry involvement there blocking things like a form of read only lack of permissions problem.

 

Of course all applications, virtualization and everything else will be closed when a user logs out. Hyper-V has a nice feature, though: you can leave a vm on and running and just log out from your account in host or shutdown / hibernate your host PC:





When signing back in you can select if the vm will be automatically restored to its saved state or booted up, and set the delay for that:





If you instead of signing off just switch users, the Hyper-V virtual machines keep running normally on your user account as any application would do. You can simply use remote desktop connection to remote it from another user account: User A has setup a vm in Hyper-V in his user account. User B needs to use the PC, User A agrees and switches to User B's sign-in page leaving his account running in the background.

User B signs in and can now use remote desktop to connect to the vm in User A's profile "space".

If the User B wants to connect to User A's vm directly from the Hyper-V manager, he needs first to be added to Hyper-V Administrators group:





Only the first user setting up Hyper-V in Windows will be added to Hyper-V Administrators automatically, all other users need to be added manually.

 

I have to wonder if a physically remote pc would be able to connect to a VM by the remote desktop option as well. This is one of the areas I have had problems with at times using Virtual Box and VM Player while Hyper-V allows you to create a fresh network switch or essentially a network adapter for each new VM while the 3rd party players tend to see only the share with host OS unless manually http://www.zdnet.com/article/north-a...y-runs-dry/all configuring the Mac and IP addresses, IPV6, etc. "we're now fresh out of 32bit IPV4 addresses. Sorry!"

 

There are absolutely no problems in connecting to a vm remotely from a PC in another network, over the Internet. Remote connection does not care if the remote host is a physical machine or a virtual machine, as long as requirements for the remote connections are met.

In case of a Hyper-V virtual machine, this is all it needs:

• The vm must of course be on and running and use an external virtual switch for Internet connectivity
• The guest OS (vm) must have incoming remote connections allowed
• The router must be configured to forward port 3389 to the vm in question. Port number can be changed, by default RDP uses port 3389 (see more in Part Eight in Remote Desktop tutorial)