Hardware access on a Hypervisor that is a Hyper-V guest on a physical server
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Strange question I know, but this is a definite case of curiosity, not necessarily anything test-related.
I'm watching the "Configuring Hyper-V" video on the 70-410 course and have walked through the difference between type 1 and type 2 hypervisors. I have already seen another thread that asks if you can run Hyper-V on something like VMSphere, but my questions specifically is this:
Let's call our Physical Hypervisor HV1, and on it there is a guest OS of Server 2012 - we'll call this HV2. If HV2 is running Hyper-V and I create a guest OS on it (let's call that one CL1), will CL1 still have sirect access to the hardware on HV1, or will it only have access to the emulated hardware on HV2? I hope this question makes sense.
Note: I know it is possible to install Hyper-V on a guest OS as shown at blogs.technet.com/b/gbanin/archive/2013/06/26/how-to-install-hyper-v-on-a-virtual-machine-in-hyper-v.aspx. My question is only about the hardware access.
Thanks! -
Dustin,
Even though you can install Hyper-V as a guest OS and run it. You can create clients on it but they cannot be started. The article you referred to also indicated this.
So regardless of whether or not the client virtualized on a virtualized Hyper-V server can use the underlying hardware or can't isn't something that I have even thought about. Others may choose to chime in on this one!
Cordially,
Ronnie Wong
Host, ITProTV -
I mentioned in the other thread that dealt with running Hyper-V inside of a VMware VM, but since your asking about hypervisors in general for your HYV1 example, I will point out again that it is possible. Case in point:
That screenshot I just took shows a VMware ESXi hypervisor as "HYV1", with a 2012 Server running Hyper-V as a VM inside of it (HYV2). That Hyper-V server is running it's own virtual machine (CL1) successfully.
Granted the performance is going to be sub-par and it takes some tweaking to get working, but it is possible for a lab setup. You basically need to trick Hyper-V to think it's not in a virtual machine itself. Whether or not this is possible at all in a nested Hyper-V in Hyper-V scenario, I do not know and would wager the answer is 'no'.
To your question about direct hardware access, can you be a little more specific? What type of direct hardware access are you trying to achieve? One of the key features of virtualization is a hardware abstraction layer, so the VMs (VMware or Hyper-V) don't really have direct access to the hardware but run through the hypervisor. You can pass some hardware through, such as a USB drive, to an underlying VM. I imagine this would work just fine in the ESX->HYV->VM scenario I outlined above, though I never personally tested it. You could also likely use RDMs to setup a similar access to hard drives. But I'm not sure exactly what you are trying to do.