Hyper-V on Windows 8 client

pparks1

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Well, I tried to use it a while back and found that my Core 2 Duo E8400 didn't support SLAT (secondary level address translation), therefore I wasn't able to put it through it's paces.

I got the parts for a new computer at work and upgraded to a Core i7-3770 and finally got a chance to get hyper-V setup today. While it's nice that it is included by default with Windows, and it does have snapshot ability (nice plus over the free VMWare product), it's still a real PITA to work with Linux boxes on this thing. Not only did I have to download the Linux connectivity kit and then force an RPM install with a --nodeps switch, but I had to build the configuration files for the networking as well.

Performance is pretty solid, but even though MS touts this as a type 1 hypervisor, it didn't really feel any speedier than VMWare Workstation 8. I find that the VMWare Workstation interface is much nicer than the Hyper-V manager that this product comes with by default.

So, it's a good product and for primary Windows users, it should suffice and work great. For Linux users, I would stick with VMWare or VirtualBox at this time.
 

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Now that you mentioned this:
I also tried that on my dual core (t7500) which has VT-x but no SLAT :(, good that my i5 has both :).

Checking if your CPU has SLAT:
How to Check if Your CPU Supports Second Level Address Translation (SLAT) - How-To Geek

Speed between VBox, VMware and Hyper-V is not noticeable always, I think it depends what application is running at the moment in the VM.

The fact Hyper-V is a type 1 hypervisor, makes the next test interesting: it should win the "overhead benchamark on some cpu intensive apps" contest, but I can be wrong about this.

VMware Player vs VirtualBox vs Hyper-V

I'm curious about the overhead on some applications. For instance I tested Red Alert 2 YR in a VM (weird example?) and it's known to fully use 1 single core of the CPU on a host. The test was made using a xp sp3 vm, 1cpu + 1024mb ram all on a Win7 x64 host:
-VBox 4.2 rc4 uses 25% of the quad core (SINGLE CORE XP VM) => that's 1 core used on the host
-VMPlayer 5 uses 50% of the same cpu (SINGLE CORE XP VM) => that's 2 cores used on the host
-Hyper-V not yet tested :(

Note that hardware virtualization was on for all tested examples above. PAE (physical address extension) is by default on in case of VMware and VBox can turn this on or off (no big deal in performance gain in the tested case).

So it means that on some (cpu intensive) applications, although the VM is assigned to use 1 core in the guest (in case of VMware), it uses 2 cores in the host, meaning that 1 core is used for extra calculations/stuff.

VBox didn't exceeded 1core on the host and that means less overhead with this program.

Red Alert 2 is an old game but still it runs better on VBox (25% usage) than on Player (50% usage).

I like trustworthy VM's that don't exceed the CPU usage mentioned in the settings, so VBox wins this round.
Note that in case of something like Angry Birds in the VM, VMware Player wins, so it seems the overhead is application-dependent.

Since I run iTunes in a VM only (don't want to bloat my host os), I can say that the encoding of aac goes a bit faster in the VMware Player VM.

Now I'll try to run the same things on Hyper-V to see how that goes, but last time I used it, I didn't managed to transfer data between host and guest (be it shared folders, network drives, usb sticks, drag and drop!?) so maybe I'll get this working now (Hyper-V beginner issues).

It's up to Hyper-V to take this test, I'll see if I get the time for a quick test...
 

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The fact Hyper-V is a type 1 hypervisor, makes the next test interesting: it should win the "overhead benchamark on some cpu intensive apps" contest, but I can be wrong about this.
I'm really questioning the decision to label Hyper-V as a type 1 hypervisor. It's like a play on words concept here.

A type 1 hypervisor runs bare metal on a machine without a host operating system. That's the way that I always learned it. But now, we are saying that in the case of Hyper-V, a type 1 hypervisor has direct access to the hardware of the physical machine.

Yesterday, I set up Hyper-V on Windows 8 and setup 2 VM's. I then purposely crashed my Windows 8 host machine. Guess what, the VM's went down with the ship.

And compared to a true type 1 hypervisor (Xen Server, ESXi, Hyper-V standalone), there will have to be some performance hit for running Windows 8 as the host machine at the same time.
 

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Yesterday, I set up Hyper-V on Windows 8 and setup 2 VM's. I then purposely crashed my Windows 8 host machine. Guess what, the VM's went down with the ship.

And compared to a true type 1 hypervisor (Xen Server, ESXi, Hyper-V standalone), there will have to be some performance hit for running Windows 8 as the host machine at the same time.

So Win8 crashed, crashing all the VM's. And this is not something the standalone wouldn't do... Thanks for mentioning this.
It's core components must be somehow linked with Win8 and that makes it dependent on the os. I'll call it, if I'm allowed, "hybrid type 1" in this case.


To complete the test I mentioned earlier:

I managed to get the same XP VM going in Hyper-V on Win8 x64. The thing is you cannot fully compare it with VBox or Player unless you get a sound card or dx/opengl (at least the basics) running (is there even a way to achieve this in Hyper-V?).

-the iTunes encoding went pretty fast, but with same results as VMware Player (as you said, there must be a performance hit).
-you cannot run Angry Birds without opengl
-and Red Alert 2 wasn't showing any interface onscreen

On the other hand, I installed the integration tools and the 7zip benchmark exceeded Player and VBox scores.
The restart and shutdown are flawless, faster than in Player (VBox is the fastest here but short sound and/or image glitches can happen)

So Hyper-V has very low CPU overhead but you cannot test all applications without opengl or sound enabled. Probably it's intended for plain business use with about 8 mb graphics card or there may be tweaks that I don't know yet.

Since only desktop usage is done in my case, I personally jump between VMware Player (drag and drop + good directx) and VirtualBox (snapshots + support and conversion for many virtual HDD's). I wouldn' t use Hyper-V for desktop usage since it's a bit complex for that (has many advanced features but lacks other basic desktop features: sound and video for example). The other disadvantage is that you cannot switch between Player & VBox on the same host if Hyper-V is enabled (the type 1 hypervisor excuse/rule: don't run a hypervisor in a hypervisor!).

Cheers
Hopachi
 

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I'm really questioning the decision to label Hyper-V as a type 1 hypervisor. It's like a play on words concept here.

A type 1 hypervisor runs bare metal on a machine without a host operating system. That's the way that I always learned it. But now, we are saying that in the case of Hyper-V, a type 1 hypervisor has direct access to the hardware of the physical machine.

Yesterday, I set up Hyper-V on Windows 8 and setup 2 VM's. I then purposely crashed my Windows 8 host machine. Guess what, the VM's went down with the ship.

And compared to a true type 1 hypervisor (Xen Server, ESXi, Hyper-V standalone), there will have to be some performance hit for running Windows 8 as the host machine at the same time.
Hyper-V is a type-1 hypervisor, but the original OS becomes the management partition. It differs from, say, ESX where the hypervisor management is part of the OS rather than the OS itself, but the virtualization itself is still type-1. Having a management partition does give you much more debugging and monitoring than a design like ESX, but the VMs are the same between the two, and the parent "management" partition is still subject to the same performance "fair use" rules as any of the other virtual machines running on the hypervisor. There's no performance hit other than a Microsoft Hyper-V installation always has at least one virtual machine always running on it - the management VM/partition.
 

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I'm really questioning the decision to label Hyper-V as a type 1 hypervisor. It's like a play on words concept here.

A type 1 hypervisor runs bare metal on a machine without a host operating system. That's the way that I always learned it. But now, we are saying that in the case of Hyper-V, a type 1 hypervisor has direct access to the hardware of the physical machine.

Yesterday, I set up Hyper-V on Windows 8 and setup 2 VM's. I then purposely crashed my Windows 8 host machine. Guess what, the VM's went down with the ship.

And compared to a true type 1 hypervisor (Xen Server, ESXi, Hyper-V standalone), there will have to be some performance hit for running Windows 8 as the host machine at the same time.
Hyper-V is a type-1 hypervisor, but the original OS becomes the management partition. It differs from, say, ESX where the hypervisor management is part of the OS rather than the OS itself, but the virtualization itself is still type-1. Having a management partition does give you much more debugging and monitoring than a design like ESX, but the VMs are the same between the two, and the parent "management" partition is still subject to the same performance "fair use" rules as any of the other virtual machines running on the hypervisor. There's no performance hit other than a Microsoft Hyper-V installation always has at least one virtual machine always running on it - the management VM/partition.

I can see calling Windows Server 2012 hyper-v standalone a type 1 hypervisor...and I can see that OS as the managementVM/partition.

However, i don't really feel that Windows 8 running the Hyper-V client is the same thing. The performance hit here is that the Windows 8 client OS system is a much larger footprint that say the ESXi OS or Hyper-V standalone Server Core only.

Just my $0.02.
 

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I can see calling Windows Server 2012 hyper-v standalone a type 1 hypervisor...and I can see that OS as the managementVM/partition.

However, i don't really feel that Windows 8 running the Hyper-V client is the same thing. The performance hit here is that the Windows 8 client OS system is a much larger footprint that say the ESXi OS or Hyper-V standalone Server Core only.

Just my $0.02.
That's understandable, but that's one of the reasons why Windows 8 requires a SLAT-enabled CPU (and 2012 does not). The Windows 8 Hyper-V isn't meant to run server workloads, it's designed more for dev and test environments, so you'd expect things like dev tools and such on that Win8 management partition as well. SLAT allows you to do things like sleep/hibernate, play games, etc - which isn't something you'd want to even try without a SLAT-enabled CPU. I get the small footprint thing, but hyper-v on Win8 doesn't have really the same usage-case scenarios as it's goals as say an enterprise server would.
 

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    Asus Maximus Hero VII
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    32GB DDR3
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So Hyper-V has very low CPU overhead but you cannot test all applications without opengl or sound enabled. Probably it's intended for plain business use with about 8 mb graphics card or there may be tweaks that I don't know yet.
It is, but remember you can RDP into it, which allows you to do things like redirect drives, audio, etc. But again, it's really meant to be a dev/test environment, not a compatibility environment. The server side of things allows you to virtualize video cards to use things like RemoteFX to accelerate DirectX and other video and image things inside the VM over RDP, but it's not meant for gaming, for instance. It *can* be used as a compatibility vessel for old applications and such, to a point (similar to what MED-V does on Windows 7), but it is what it is. It's good that there are lots of virtualization options for Windows, but Hyper-V is Microsoft's enterprise virtualization stack. It makes sense that's kinda what it's designed for ;). There are some type-2 virtualization products that can do some of the acceleration inside the VM and viewer, so if you're looking for that sort of thing, it can be done. However, I don't know what kind of performance you'd get compared to dual-booting, for instance, and running that OS natively.
 

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The Windows 8 Hyper-V isn't meant to run server workloads, it's designed more for dev and test environments, so you'd expect things like dev tools and such on that Win8 management partition as well. SLAT allows you to do things like sleep/hibernate, play games, etc - which isn't something you'd want to even try without a SLAT-enabled CPU. I get the small footprint thing, but hyper-v on Win8 doesn't have really the same usage-case scenarios as it's goals as say an enterprise server would.
Totally understand on the desktop side....not being intended for server workloads. I would look at it as a potential replacement for having to use something like VMWare Workstation which is what I currently use on my desktop for all of my side testing, proof of concept stuff, etc.

I've been playing with the new 2012 Hyper-V quite a bit as we are considering it as a possible replacement for some of our small VMWare vSphere implementations. Historically, I have been very turned off with Hyper-V, however it's hard to not see the additional costs we are paying with vSphere for functionality that we get for free with Hyper-V. We have licenses at my job for SCVMM (System Center Virtual Machine Manager) and they are already paid for via our Enterprise agreement, so it
certainly provides a strong incentive. Thank goodness they have made the integration between Windows 8 and Hyper-V 2012 standalone more straightforward as far as remote management goes (although it really seems much harder than it needs to be) and not terribly well documented by Microsoft...but I did manage to get it going today.
 

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If you're not doing domain-based, it's a bit more of an uphill battle for sure. HVRemote is your friend there, whereas once you're in a domain environment it's easier. The hardest is actually going from workgroup client to domain Hyper-V, so hopefully you aren't running into issues there.
 

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  • OS
    Windows 8.1 x64
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    PC/Desktop
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    Custom
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    Intel Core i7 4790K @ 4.5GHz
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    Asus Maximus Hero VII
    Memory
    32GB DDR3
    Graphics Card(s)
    Nvidia GeForce GTX970
    Sound Card
    Realtek HD Audio
    Hard Drives
    1x Samsung 250GB SSD
    4x WD RE 2TB (RAIDZ)
    PSU
    Corsair AX760i
    Case
    Fractal Design Define R4
    Cooling
    Noctua NH-D15
Technically, I can run these in a domain environment. Yes, I tried previously to run in a mixed domain/non-domain mode and was using hvremote. Its absolutely absurd that it's sooo hard to get something so simple up and running. That has always been a complaint of mine with Hyper-V. Virtualization using vmware, or xenserver is drop dead simple to get up and running. Hyper V on the other hand, requires about 5 hours of Google time and eventual stumbling upon of hvremote. I'm almost surprised they don't require SSL certificates as well to connect.
 

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    Windows 7
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    Intel Q9550 2.83Ghz OC'd to 3.40Ghz
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    Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R rev. 1.1, F12 BIOS
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    8GB G.Skill PI DDR2-800, 4-4-4-12 timings
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    EVGA 1280MB Nvidia GeForce GTX570
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    Realtek ALC899A 8 channel onboard audio
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    23" Acer x233H
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    1920x1080
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    Intel X25-M 80GB Gen 2 SSD
    Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black, 32MB cache. WD1001FALS
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HVRemote isn't ready for Hyper-V 2012, yet. I was just working with that today. I did get it to work, but I'm looking forward to version 1.x - I also found the step-by-step instructions (those automated by the script), and I think those are going to work better until 1.x is released.

You could always try PowerShell ;)
 

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    80GB Intel 320 SSD
    500GB Samsung Momentus
I can appreciate being able to script things with powershell and that's really awesome. But the simple fact that you almost need to be a powershell expert to fire up a virtual machine is ridiculous. It's much easier when you use the full version of Windows server and just enable the Hyper-V role, but when you launch a standalone Hyper-V 2012 box (because it's small and free) and you simply cannot connect via any type of client to begin working and configuring your environment is just perplexing.

With Hyper-V 2012 standalone, I joined it to my domain. I then turned on remote administration. I then figured out that I had to add my local account to the local admins group and could then connect from the hyper-V management role on a Windows 8 client. It was a thing of joy. No hvremote needed. Then a quick enabling of the advfirewall via netsh and I was able to connect with Computer Management from that Windows 8 host and I was underway. Things are much improved, but could continue to be improved upon with some simply client tool that you install and then provide a username/password combo.
 

My Computer

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  • OS
    Windows 7
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    Self-Built in July 2009
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    Intel Q9550 2.83Ghz OC'd to 3.40Ghz
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    Gigabyte GA-EP45-UD3R rev. 1.1, F12 BIOS
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    8GB G.Skill PI DDR2-800, 4-4-4-12 timings
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    EVGA 1280MB Nvidia GeForce GTX570
    Sound Card
    Realtek ALC899A 8 channel onboard audio
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    23" Acer x233H
    Screen Resolution
    1920x1080
    Hard Drives
    Intel X25-M 80GB Gen 2 SSD
    Western Digital 1TB Caviar Black, 32MB cache. WD1001FALS
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    Corsair 620HX modular
    Case
    Antec P182
    Cooling
    stock
    Keyboard
    ABS M1 Mechanical
    Mouse
    Logitech G9 Laser Mouse
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    15/2 cable modem
    Other Info
    Windows and Linux enthusiast. Logitech G35 Headset.
So Hyper-V has very low CPU overhead but you cannot test all applications without opengl or sound enabled. Probably it's intended for plain business use with about 8 mb graphics card or there may be tweaks that I don't know yet.
It is, but remember you can RDP into it, which allows you to do things like redirect drives, audio, etc. But again, it's really meant to be a dev/test environment, not a compatibility environment. The server side of things allows you to virtualize video cards to use things like RemoteFX to accelerate DirectX and other video and image things inside the VM over RDP, but it's not meant for gaming, for instance. It *can* be used as a compatibility vessel for old applications and such, to a point (similar to what MED-V does on Windows 7), but it is what it is. It's good that there are lots of virtualization options for Windows, but Hyper-V is Microsoft's enterprise virtualization stack. It makes sense that's kinda what it's designed for ;). There are some type-2 virtualization products that can do some of the acceleration inside the VM and viewer, so if you're looking for that sort of thing, it can be done. However, I don't know what kind of performance you'd get compared to dual-booting, for instance, and running that OS natively.

Thanks for the explanation.

Interesting... RDP and driver redirection are things that exceed my knowledge for the moment. But its good to know what the product was specifically made for and the extra possibilities.

A 2-type virtualization product (for instance VirtualBox or VMware Player) is what I mainly use. The boot performance depends on the guest os. My i5 laptop is unable to install Win XP as a host (sata drivers included): I always get a BSOD from the cd, but a XP VM in VirtualBox boots up in about 5 seconds on a HDD! The virtual HDD is accelerated with burst speeds and exceeds the host on some tests. That's way faster than a natively boot BUT the emulated graphics are buggy and are still way beyond the native performance. But XP as a guest suits all the needs and that's why it isn't needed as a host anymore + is outdated.

There are ways to use the host graphics (if you got at least two on-board) on guest desktops with AMD-Vi and Intel VT-d CPU's but I don't have one of those. However I'm happy with the provided basic guest acceleration in most cases.

So you always have ups and downs in VM performance but it's good the VM's work as intended.:)
 

My Computer

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  • OS
    Windows 10 x64
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    Laptop
    System Manufacturer/Model
    HP Envy DV6 7250
    CPU
    Intel i7-3630QM
    Motherboard
    HP, Intel HM77 Express Chipset
    Memory
    16GB
    Graphics Card(s)
    Intel HD4000 + Nvidia Geforce 630M
    Sound Card
    IDT HD Audio
    Monitor(s) Displays
    15.6' built-in + Samsung S22D300 + 17.3' LG Phillips
    Screen Resolution
    multiple resolutions
    Hard Drives
    Samsung SSD 250GB + Hitachi HDD 750GB
    PSU
    120W adapter
    Case
    small
    Cooling
    laptop cooling pad
    Keyboard
    Backlit built-in + big one in USB
    Mouse
    SteelSeries Sensei
    Internet Speed
    slow and steady
    Browser
    Chromium, Pale Moon, Firefox Developer Edition
    Antivirus
    Windows Defender
    Other Info
    That's basically it.
There are three negatives with the Win 8 implementation that I have found to be serious in our environment.
1) SLAT should be an option not a requirement
2) Hyper-V admin console should conntect to server 2008 and Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V hosts
3) Hyper-V on Windows 8 should support USB pass-thru

It also seems strange that Win 8 does not come with a small set of license keys for client OS activation (maybe 1-XP, 1-Vista, 1-Win7). This is especially true since using client Win 7 is the only MS solution to the Hyper-V Admin Issue.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    win 8 Ent
    System Manufacturer/Model
    HP
    CPU
    8200
    Motherboard
    HP
    Memory
    4
    Graphics Card(s)
    nVidia
Yep, no one would ever, ever, want to test sound or USB devices in a test environment. Inconceivable.

As usual, at the end of a long install process, Microsoft hits me with an unexpected show stopper.
 

My Computer

System One

  • OS
    win 8
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