Here’s a snapshot of the collection of virtual machines running on Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V here right now:
That’s one Windows Server 2008 VM, one Windows Home Server, two Linux distros, and Vista Ultimate. All are allocated 1GB except Windows Home Server, which is working fine with 512MB. Total RAM usage is just a hair over 5.5GB.
This is a quad-core machine with Intel Virtualization Technology enabled. Each virtual machine’s performance is snappy; without exception, each one feels like it’s running on its own dedicated hardware.
As you can see, I did a clean install of the latest Ubuntu version a few minutes ago (the VM name is Ubuntu Test2), and installed OpenSUSE 11 two days ago. Both Linux installs went very smoothly, with no tweaking except for the need to install a Legacy Network Adapter.
Ed Bott 
What, no BSD love?
Soon, soon, soon! Too damn many distros.
It’s really a shame that there is no sound card support in Hyper-V… That really bugs me!
And I’m assuming no dual monitor love?
Well, the primary purpose of Hyper-V is to virtualize servers, so sound card support and dual monitors are a mostly unnecessary luxury. I would expect those features plus USB support to appear when the code is ported to Windows 7.
I have it running nicely on a Dell M90. I built a nice demo network.
For Windows guests, connecting via remote desktop works well for getting sound out of them. (Assuming you got sound working in the host already)
I have been using Hyper-V for quite some time now. In response to combine the sound card comment and Butch’s comment on the remote desktop…
I have a notebook setup with Hyper-V, when my Fiance logs in I have it auto-start a remote desktop connection to a Hyper-V hosted machine within the notebook. Sound, images, Aero, even online videos work perfect.
It would be more appropriate to state that the program Virtual Machine Connection (the actual viewer window) doesn’t support sound or dual monitor, and yes remote desktop does support spanning over multiple monitors.
Zac
Very cool.
Interesting that you’re running Windows Home Server under Windows Server 2008. Other than testing, not sure what the advantages of that might be.
Just picked up a refurb HP 9177 Quad Core here for the desktop PC. You’re giving me some ideas now…. !
How is network performance with your Hyper-V *nix installations? I have installed FC8 x64 and Ubuntu 8.04 x86 and my network performance is terrible using the legacy network adapters.
I have been testing guest to parent performance using a share on the 2008 server and mount it under the guest. Then dd if=/dev/zero of=/mnt/share bs=25M count=1.
On Fedora 8, I would get about 2MB/s.
On Ubuntu 8.04, I would get about 6MB/s.
I really dont know where to turn, but this performance is killing me. Windows to Windows performance is great.
I have tested Linux to Linux using NFS and CIFS and Linux to Windows all with similar results.
Jason,
I have Fedora 8 & 9 up but haven’t ran through a speed test. It felt the same to me as my host os and all of the other guests. Are you using a unique network adapter for your virtual network?
Just wondering how you managed to get Windows Home-Server loaded within Hyper-V ? The install I have requires a SATA or SCSI boot disk to install, hence the install within Hyper-V fails.
Did you migrate it over from a physical server?
Cheers
Aaron
Aaron, I just installed WHS using the regular installation media without any incident. It’s been running for months so I don’t really recall exactly how, but I would have remembered (and noted) if I had to use any special drivers or techniques. I’ll take another look later and see if I can offer any additional guidance.
Is there any way to port a running WHS server into a hyper-v install?
Ankur, I don’t think that would be possible. There’s a lot of storage stuff going on (Drive Extender, etc.) that would be impossible to port using conventional tools.