HYPER-V 3.0 HARDWARE REQUIREMENTSSo, in Win8 CP the
Hyper-V replaced
Windows Virtual PC, which doesn't support installation and running Win8
. Hyper-V major advantage is sheer corporate power in user virtualization experience, and it relies on Virtual Hard Disks (VHD) storage medium in delivering this experience. Why virtualization is important at home for a consumer? One of many advantages we already know - it allows running OS on real hardware from a VHD file almost as efficiently as from real HD. Since native boot from VHD becomes available in Win7, its popularity in testing new software, PC service and daily routing tasks grown exponentially. According to MS official OS telemetry stats,
more than 30% of Win8 CP installs are now done to native boot VHDs - this is despite the release is mostly consumer oriented. This figure is expected to grow fast in the future.
VHD delivers overwhelming advantages to a "user at large" compare to original or extracted ISO run from HD or USB Thumb:
- a user needs to copy only a single VHD file to the Thumb and can delete it at once instead of thousand of OS files from an extracted ISO;
- it allows to install and run any number of regular unmodified apps to the VHD, which isn't possible with ISO, even the extracted one;
- in most practical scenarios OS and apps run from the VHD as fast as from a physical HD;
- the VHD can be made relatively small after some OS customization, able to run on older hardware.
One obvious way to install
Win8 CP to a VHD is to hook
Win8 CP Setup ISO to
a Hyper-V VM, create a new VHD with
Hyper-V Manager, and install the OS as usual to the VHD as a hard drive. In this scenario VHD must then be
sysprepped (generalized) or some of its Registry and BCD settings adjusted to enable booting it natively on a real PC.
Why then
Hyper-V requires
SLAT capable processor, making it unavailable on older hardware? One of main reasons is
RemoteFX technology
supported by
Hyper-V 3.0, which allows to virtualize physical
GPU in virtual machines in a way that enables graphics hardware acceleration inside VMs. This makes playing high resolution MKV movies or web video inside a
Hyper-V VM as smooth as on real hardware. The host's VM rendered signal is then compressed and sent wireless via low bandwidth
Remote Desktop Connections to
Thin Clients,
Tablets or TVs, thus delivering low cost high quality graphics and video across various end user home devices.
Remote Clients can also hook into
Hyper-V VMs via a scaled down
VM Console connection. So, ideally one can run several
Hyper-V VMs on a single Win8 CP host server, and all family members can watch various movies, listen to music or browse the web via such server using scaled down cheap Netbooks or Thin Clients hooked to TVs & large Monitors & Audio Systems, each connected to its own Guest VM, or have separate VM Desktops in their whole discretion on personal
Tablets.For
Windows 8 Server and
Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, SLAT support isn’t mandatory unless the
RemoteFX role service is enabled. Lets hope, product differentiation will urge MS to lift at some point
SLAT proc requirement in Win8 Client, making
Hyper-V available with limited features on older PCs running Win8.
Even if your PC can't run Hyper-V now, it can still boot Win8 CP from a native boot VHD, so you don't need to create a separate partition on your HD to try Win8.