Microsoft Bringing Hyper-V Support to Windows 8

Proving that virtualization can be for more than just the enterprise, Microsoft has announced that it will be including Hyper-V support in all versions of Windows 8. First introduced with Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V is Microsoft’s hypervisor that allows you to install all recent versions of Windows and some versions of Linux to a virtual machine, with both 32-bit and 64-bit OSes supported.

Due to 32-bit OS memory limitations, Hyper-V will require a 64-bit OS, along with a minimum of 4GB of RAM and also ‘Second Level Address Translation’ (SLAT). Recent processors from both AMD and Intel (within the last three years) should be appropriate for the job. Additional support such as Intel VT-x or AMD-V would improve performance further.

While Hyper-V will be included with Windows 8, it won’t be automatically installed (a good thing). To do that, the Windows Features tool would need to be opened, and then the Hyper-V option checked. A short time later, Hyper-V will be installed and ready to go. For machines with 4GB of RAM, the virtual machine limit will be 4 (running at the same time), while 5 or more will require additional memory.

Microsoft doesn’t seem to be holding back with the capabilities of Hyper-V, as you will be able to dedicate up to 32 processors (or threads) and 512GB of RAM to a single VM.

I admit that I haven’t tested out Hyper-V in the past, despite having used both VMware and VirtualBox quite extensively. This announcement does intrigue me, though I do wish the non-Windows support was just a bit more robust. With Microsoft’s recent dedication to Hyper-V in the Linux kernel however, that might just be a matter of time.