I've been away all week, teaching in Trondheim Norway. A nice place, great students and a useful Microsoft training course. In the course, Hyper-V features quite a lot - one cool feature discussed in nested Hyper-V.
Nested Hyper-V is a feature that enables you to create a virtual machine, and then load Hyper-V into that machine. So you can have a VM running VMs. This feature is cool, certainly at a technical level. No doubt someone is going to point out that VMware supports this, but the feature is new in Hyper-V on Server 2016. And interestingly enough, it works in Windows 10 Anniversary Update too!
Why does it matter? For me, it matters since I am writing a book on PowerShell showing its range and depth. One chapter covers Hyper-V and having Nested Hyper-V means I can create two VMs (HV1, HV2) cluster the VMs, then create clustered virtual machines, The chapter is now easier to write.
The feature matters for customers too. This enables you to use Hyper-V containers within a VM on a VM. And, it's a fantastic training tool when using on-line labs. The lab vendor, such as Virsoft (a great hosted labs experience!), to provide a student with a VM, in which they can load and use Hyper-V. Previously that was unsupported.
Getting nested Hyper-V to work is great news. For some time, I believed that this would not work on my systems. I have three big Dell Precision 7500 systems. When I tried this during the beta of Windows Server 2016, Coreinfo.exe suggested that my system did not support SLAT. And that meant I could not use nested Hyper-V. But it was wrong!
Here's a picture of a VM hosting a nested VM:
As you can see, a VM running a nested VM. The nested VM, which I called 'embedded' is in the midst on installation.
It turns out that the fix was pretty simple. In the host VM, I just had to issue a simple PowerShell command:
Nested Hyper-V is a feature that enables you to create a virtual machine, and then load Hyper-V into that machine. So you can have a VM running VMs. This feature is cool, certainly at a technical level. No doubt someone is going to point out that VMware supports this, but the feature is new in Hyper-V on Server 2016. And interestingly enough, it works in Windows 10 Anniversary Update too!
Why does it matter? For me, it matters since I am writing a book on PowerShell showing its range and depth. One chapter covers Hyper-V and having Nested Hyper-V means I can create two VMs (HV1, HV2) cluster the VMs, then create clustered virtual machines, The chapter is now easier to write.
The feature matters for customers too. This enables you to use Hyper-V containers within a VM on a VM. And, it's a fantastic training tool when using on-line labs. The lab vendor, such as Virsoft (a great hosted labs experience!), to provide a student with a VM, in which they can load and use Hyper-V. Previously that was unsupported.
Getting nested Hyper-V to work is great news. For some time, I believed that this would not work on my systems. I have three big Dell Precision 7500 systems. When I tried this during the beta of Windows Server 2016, Coreinfo.exe suggested that my system did not support SLAT. And that meant I could not use nested Hyper-V. But it was wrong!
Here's a picture of a VM hosting a nested VM:
It turns out that the fix was pretty simple. In the host VM, I just had to issue a simple PowerShell command:
Set-VMProcessor -VMname DC1-ExposeVirtualizationExtensions $TrueI had to shut down the VM first, then reboot. Once rebooted, I was able to bring up the Hyper-V console and create the embedded VM.
1 comment:
Hi Thomas,
My name is Anuj Agarwal. I'm Founder of Feedspot.
I would like to personally congratulate you as your blog Under The Stairs has been selected by our panelist as one of the Top 50 PowerShell Blogs on the web.
http://blog.feedspot.com/powershell_blogs/
I personally give you a high-five and want to thank you for your contribution to this world. This is the most comprehensive list of Top 50 PowerShell Blogs on the internet and I’m honored to have you as part of this!
Also, you have the honor of displaying the badge on your blog.
Best,
Anuj
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