Hyper-V has been around for long enough that most of its features are well known. Even so, there are a few somewhat obscure features that are actually pretty cool.
In this blog post, I want to take the opportunity to tell you about five of my favorite lesser known Hyper-V features.
The Hidden Battery
In the Windows 10 Fall Creator Update, Microsoft introduced a feature called Battery Passthrough. The basic idea behind this feature is simple. Suppose that you are running a virtual machine in full screen mode on a Windows 10 laptop. Prior to the introduction of the Batter Passthrough feature, it would have been impossible to keep an eye on your battery without periodically reducing the VM to a window.
Starting with the Fall Creator Update virtual machines will display the battery status of the Windows 10 host (assuming that the host has a battery and that you upgrade the VM version). Keep in mind that although the VM inherits the host’s battery level, the VM actually knows that it is running off of battery. This means that you can configure power management at the VM level (from within the guest OS).
RDP Client Visuals
OK, this one isn’t technically a Hyper-V feature, but is rather a feature of the Windows 10 RDP client that is so often used to connect to Hyper-V VMs. Display resolution inside of the RDP client has long been a point of frustration for admins. Often it seems that the remote VM’s desktop gets cut off, or the display is too small to read, or there is some other visual problem.
The current version of the RDP Client however, is equipped with a Smart Sizing Option. Simply click on the icon in the upper left of the RDP window and then choose Smart Sizing from the resulting window, and the remote VM’s display will be automatically scaled to fit the current window size. If you still have trouble reading the display, then the same menu contains a Zoom option that you can use to manually zoom in and out on the VM’s desktop.
Storage QoS
We’ve all had that one VM that consumes so many storage IOPS that it causes all of our other virtual machines to run at a snail’s pace. The Hyper-V Storage QoS feature can help. The Storage QoS feature allows you to set a minimum and / or a maximum number of IOPS for a virtual machine. That way, you can limit the number of storage IOPS that a high demand VM consumes, or you can guarantee a certain minimum level of service for a really important VM.
Storage QoS is set on a per virtual hard disk basis. To use the feature, just go into the Settings for a VM, expand the listing for the virtual hard disk, and click on the Quality of Service container. From there, you can enable the Storage QoS feature by selecting a checkbox and then entering your desired IOPS thresholds.
Guest Services
The Hyper-V Integration Services are a collection of drivers that allow a virtual machine to interact directly with the hardware, thereby giving the VM a level of performance similar to what might be expected if the VM were running on physical hardware.
Modern Windows guest operating systems no longer require the Hyper-V Integration Services to be manually installed. The services are integrated into the OS, and are installed automatically. What you might not realize though, is that the Integration Services are actually a collection of several different services that can be enabled and disabled individually.
The individual Integration Services can be enabled or disabled through the Hyper-V Manager by going to a VM’s Settings screen and clicking on the Integration Services container. For modern Windows guests, all of the Integration Services are enabled by default – except one. The Guest Services have to be enabled manually.
If you are not familiar with the Guest Services, it allows you to copy files directly to the VM without having to leverage the network stack. PowerShell has a special cmdlet called Copy0 VMFile that can be used to copy files from a Hyper-V host to a guest running on that host.
Nested Virtualization
Starting with Windows Server 2016 (and the Windows 10 Anniversary Update) Microsoft began supporting nested virtualization for Hyper-V. In other words, you can host virtual machines inside of a virtual machine. In order to use nested virtualization, the host and guest must be running either Windows Server 2016 (or higher) or the Windows 10 Anniversary Update (or higher). In addition, the virtual machine has to be running configuration version 8.0 or higher, and the host must support Intel VT-x and EPT. AMD hosts do not support nested virtualization.
You can enable nested virtualization for a VM by entering the following command while the VM is turned off:
Set-VMProcessor -VMName
Follow our Twitter and Facebook feeds for new releases, updates, insightful posts and more.
