How To Install Hyper-V

What is Hyper-V? Hyper-V gives you the ability to install virtual machines. Hardware and/or System virtual machines allow the sharing of the underlying physical machine resources between different virtual machines, each running its own operating system. The software layer providing the virtualization is called a virtual machine monitor or hypervisor.

The main advantages of Virtual Machines (VMs) are:

• Multiple Operating System environments can co-exist on the same computer, in strong isolation from each other
• The virtual machine can provide an instruction set architecture (ISA) that is somewhat different from that of the real machine
• Application provisioning, maintenance, high availability and disaster recovery

What does all of this mean? If you are currently running Windows Server 2008 on your computer you can also have Windows XP installed. XP would run in a separate space on your hard drive and would launch in a new window on top of your Windows Server 2008 installation. Giving you two operating systems to run. You could use the XP virtual machine to run older software. Another example would be if you were a developer and you wanted to test different applications in different operating systems. You would use the virtual machine to test your applications, if something were to go wrong with the new software you were testing it wouldn't harm your Windows Server installation. IT companies would use virtual machines on their network to test applications before deploying the applications network wide. Now that you understand what a virtual machine is lets get started with the installation process.

Just for giggles I am going to be installing Hyper-V inside a virtual machine already created with VMWare. When I am finished I will have a virtual machine running inside a virtual machine. I have Windows Server 2008 installed as a virtual machine with VMWare in my current Windows 7 Ultimate operating system. If you are brave you can follow along, view how to create a virtual machine with VMWare Server. When you are finished with that article come back and follow along. If you are not the brave type continue reading.

Stuff you need to install Hyper-V is as follows:

• This tutorial is strictly for the installation of a computer running Windows 2008 Server x64 edition.
• Processor: x64 compatible processor with Intel VT or AMD-V technology enabled. Hardware Data Execution Prevention (DEP), specifically Intel XD bit (execute disable bit) or AMD NX bit (no execute bit), must be available and enabled.
• Download the Intel Processor Identification Utility from Intel to confirm if your CPU has the technology neccessary to run Hyper-V.
• Download the AMD-V Hyper-V Compatibility Check Utility V2 to see if your AMD CPU meets the requirements for hardware virtualization.
• Before you install Hyper-V, verify that your computer has been updated with the release version of Hyper-V. The release version (RTM) of Windows Server 2008 included the pre-release version of Hyper-V. The release version of Hyper-V is offered through Windows Update as a recommended update, Hyper-V Update for Windows Server 2008 x64 Edition (KB950050). However, you also can obtain the update through the Microsoft Download Center. Download Hyper-V update.
• Once you have installed the update follow the instructions below to install Hyper-V.

Installation Instructions For Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008

• Click Start, and then click Server Manager.
• In the Roles Summary area of the Server Manager main window, click Add Roles.
• On the Select Server Roles page, click Hyper-V.
• On the Create Virtual Networks page, click one or more network adapters if you want to make their network connection available to virtual machines.
• On the Confirm Installation Selections page, click Install.
• The computer must be restarted to complete the installation. Click Close to finish the wizard, and then click Yes to restart the computer.
• After you restart the computer, log on with the same account you used to install the role. After the Resume Configuration Wizard completes the installation, click Close to finish the wizard.