Windows 10: Win 10 Tech Preview is interesting but not compelling

What exactly do you mean? How is that any different from VMWare? VMWare Workstation runs the VM in it's own little container in its own virtual system without using any network switches or running the VMs as if they're on a whole intranet so to say. It's easier to virtualize and maintain a VM than it is with Hyper-V where it's like a whole different PC running alongside the host. That doesn't really make sense, but when you use the two, you know the difference. Being able to drag and drop files and programs into a VM is MUCH easier than trying to do the same with Hyper-V. It's more advanced for sure.

Basically, VMWare knows how to virtualize software quite nicely. The Hyper-V setup in Windows seems very clunky to use. Honestly, I've never been able to get Windows 7 or 8 installed in Hyper-V and have everything work as nicely as it does in VMWare even when following everything to the T. Display drivers don't install, audio isn't there, etc. You don't *NEED* to install display drivers or audio drivers in Windows 8 guests, as they have hyper-v virtualization drivers built in. These should be detected automatically (although I've seen that guest services are often disabled by default, you need to click the check box in the settings page). In fact, if you try to install the drivers, it will tell you they're already installed.

Windows 7 requires the integration services setup, but this has always worked flawlessly for me. So I really don't understand why you have so much trouble.

You also are not correct about network switches, as Hyper-V has it's own virtual network switches as well. In fact it says quite specifically "Virtual Switch" right on the network adapters dialog. So i'm not sure what you're talking about there either.

I've used VMWare for many years, and it works pretty much the same way.. so I also don't understand how you say they don't work the same way. Both are "containers" that run complete systems side by side... more or less (that's what a hyper-visor does, it runs the VM at the core kernel level for efficiency... VMWare does this as well as evidenced by the fact you can completely close the VMWare Workstation app and the Virtual Machine will stay running)

Yes, VMWare does have tighter desktop integration... personally, I don't find drag and drop useful at all. Copy and paste works just as well, and is far more reliable to me (I've never used drag and drop in VMware). I don't even use drag and drop in Windows Explorer, because it's way to easy to drop things in the wrong place, and then you have to figure out where they went.

Hyper-V uses Remote Desktop to connect to the server, rather than running yet another service (or worse, multiple services). But this gives you most things you need, short of drag and drop or "unity"-like application virtualization. Both of which I consider more gimmicks than useful. But, be that as it may if you absolutely have to have those features, I doubt we'll ever see them in client hyper-v as Microsoft limits them to their server platform with RemoteFX.

 

What exactly do you mean? How is that any different from VMWare? VMWare Workstation runs the VM in it's own little container in its own virtual system without using any network switches or running the VMs as if they're on a whole intranet so to say. It's easier to virtualize and maintain a VM than it is with Hyper-V where it's like a whole different PC running alongside the host. That doesn't really make sense, but when you use the two, you know the difference. Being able to drag and drop files and programs into a VM is MUCH easier than trying to do the same with Hyper-V. It's more advanced for sure.

Basically, VMWare knows how to virtualize software quite nicely. The Hyper-V setup in Windows seems very clunky to use. Honestly, I've never been able to get Windows 7 or 8 installed in Hyper-V and have everything work as nicely as it does in VMWare even when following everything to the T. Display drivers don't install, audio isn't there, etc. Hi there

HYPER-V comes originally from SERVER type environments where people Virtualise 1000's of machines for different clients using racks of hardware "Blades" etc. The HYPER-V is a very teeny OS so the VM is running with the actual hardware and no overhead of an underlying OS (Windows etc) and the main object is to provide as much performance to the VM's as possible. In some commercial environments VM performance can be almost 100% native speed.

Things like VMware and vbox are more suited for home / individual users -- the vm software sits on top of an underlying OS (Windows / Linux usually) and usually provides a lot of its own drivers so the VM has limited connection with the REAL hardware. They use a technique called "Para virtualisation.

HYPER-V on W8 in theory could be more efficient (I/O most certainly is in any case) but you still have the W8 underlying OS overhead even though you load up the W8 (or W10) HYPER-V Hypervisor first.

While it's not "Full Virtualisation" it is far more like Full Virtualisation" than the Para Virtualisation methods of VMWARE etc.

It's a complex topic but this article should get you started. (I'm not a believer in You Tube or Video tutorials for explaining complex topics) -- unfortunately everybody seems to go bonkers over them --It's easier IMO to READ and RE-READ articles and diagrams -- maybe I'm just an old Dinosaur !! but I have in my time taught loads of students (successfully I hope).

Three Kinds of Server Virtualization - HowStuffWorks

IMO the best way to use HYPER-V would be to get the "Almost" bare metal version from 2012 Server edition - but again probably overkill for a HOME user.

Cheers
jimbo

 

I'm quite aware of how it works. Both Hyper-V and VMWare work pretty much the same way. you just *perceive* them to be different. VMWare installs special drivers that are, in effect a hypervisor, and allow the VM to run even when the VMWare application is not running.

That particular article you link to is not particularly accurate. Or rather, it's easy to misunderstand it. While it's accurate about paravirtualization, the term as applied to drivers is a little different and means that drivers work in a shared virtualization model, which is the only way you can share a single piece of hardware across multiple virtual devices with any kind of performance. Both VMWare and Hyper-V use a Paravirtualized driver model.

Hyper-V: The no-brainer virtualization stack for Windows | ZDNet

"In order to exact the best possible performance out of these guest operating systems, a set of "Integration Tools" are provided in the form of paravirtualized device drivers for networking, display, mouse and I/O. A similar paravirtualization method is also used by competitor VMWare with guest-based "VMWare Tools" in order to provide enhanced virtual memory management, networking and display/mouse services, which has been released as Open Source as GPL free software."

The point here is that Client Hyper-V and VMWare Workstation work almost identically under the covers, so your comments about how Hyper-v "doesn't make sense" is simply the fact that you either don't really understand how Hyper-V works or you don't understand how VMWare Workstation works, or both, since they're virtually (no pun intended) the same in this regard.

The only major differences between them is the "viewer" technology used. With a lot of smaller differences in terms of specific kinds of low-level configuration and features. VMWare is certainly more configurable, and the viewer is more integrated into the desktop (because Hyper-V's viewer is just based on Remote Desktop). But, as desktop products Hyper-V works perfectly fine for all my uses.

 

I prefer Hyper-V as I believe you can't overcommit RAM in VMware Player only in workstation as far as I know. Never had any issues with audio or networking. I use VMware only for OSX as this doesn't work in Hyper-V (or at least I can't get it to boot).

@Jimbo I tried Hyper-V Server (which is free) with a thought of converting my 8.1 install to a virtual machine to run on top (I only have one license). It was impractical for me as it does not support Wifi or Bluetooth etc so I gave up on that little project.

 

iam not that great with computers ,so-so I would say ,the few times I tried hyper-v, I could not get the network/internet to work, it would never find the network device for me ,even following how-to's on line

 

You could try this tutorial Hyper-V virtualization - Setup and Use in Windows 10 it is the same in 8.1 and pretty good.

Another Hyper-V advantage I just thought of is you don't have to remember to suspend or shutdown your guests when you reboot - it does it automatically and then resumes them. Having said that they are all pretty similar in the way they work and in terms of performance as far as I can see - use the one you like - I'm not trying to get all evangelical *Smile

 

I'm pretty sure VMWare will do that too, but I don't know if it does it by default. I seem to recall you had to enable it every time.

 

What I find odd, is that many of us who also post on Windows 8 Forums seemed to sing the praises of Windows 8.1 especially. They couldn't understand why a lot of users were flocking to Start Menu replacements and hating Windows 8. Jimbo loved it on his Surface, for example. But now, some of these same people are saying Windows 10 is a must release for Microsoft, citing Microsoft pushed too much change on Joe Average with Windows 8 and the Start Screen. But wait, I thought you said there was nothing wrong with the Start Screen and users should just adapt.

Where are the major changes I'm supposed to be really excited about?

 

Ditto