Virtualization software enables a single computer to run multiple operating systems.

• Article
• 04/26/2022
• 3 minutes to read

Whether you are a software developer, an IT professional, or a technology enthusiast, many of you need to run multiple operating systems. Hyper-V lets you run multiple operating systems as virtual machines on Windows.

Hyper-V specifically provides hardware virtualization. That means each virtual machine runs on virtual hardware. Hyper-V lets you create virtual hard drives, virtual switches, and a number of other virtual devices all of which can be added to virtual machines.

Reasons to use virtualization

Virtualization allows you to:

• Run software that requires an older versions of Windows or non-Windows operating systems.

• Experiment with other operating systems. Hyper-V makes it very easy to create and remove different operating systems.

• Test software on multiple operating systems using multiple virtual machines. With Hyper-V, you can run them all on a single desktop or laptop computer. These virtual machines can be exported and then imported into any other Hyper-V system, including Azure.

System requirements

Hyper-V is available on 64-bit versions of Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, and Education. It is not available on the Home edition.

Upgrade from Windows 10 Home edition to Windows 10 Pro by opening Settings > Update and Security > Activation. Here you can visit the store and purchase an upgrade.

Most computers run Hyper-V, however each virtual machine runs a completely separate operating system. You can generally run one or more virtual machines on a computer with 4GB of RAM, though you'll need more resources for additional virtual machines or to install and run resource intense software like games, video editing, or engineering design software.

For more information about Hyper-V's system requirements and how to verify that Hyper-V runs on your machine, see the Hyper-V Requirements Reference.

Operating systems you can run in a virtual machine

Hyper-V on Windows supports many different operating systems in a virtual machine including various releases of Linux, FreeBSD, and Windows.

As a reminder, you'll need to have a valid license for any operating systems you use in the VMs.

For information about which operating systems are supported as guests in Hyper-V on Windows, see Supported Windows Guest Operating Systems and Supported Linux Guest Operating Systems.

Differences between Hyper-V on Windows and Hyper-V on Windows Server

There are some features that work differently in Hyper-V on Windows than they do in Hyper-V running on Windows Server.

Hyper-V features only available on Windows Server:

• Live migration of virtual machines from one host to another
• Hyper-V Replica
• Virtual Fiber Channel
• SR-IOV networking
• Shared .VHDX

Hyper-V features only available on Windows 10:

• Quick Create and the VM Gallery
• Default network (NAT switch)

The memory management model is different for Hyper-V on Windows. On a server, Hyper-V memory is managed with the assumption that only the virtual machines are running on the server. In Hyper-V on Windows, memory is managed with the expectation that most client machines are running software on host in addition to running virtual machines.

Limitations

Programs that depend on specific hardware will not work well in a virtual machine. For example, games or applications that require processing with GPUs might not work well. Also, applications relying on sub-10ms timers such as live music mixing applications or high precision times could have issues running in a virtual machine.

In addition, if you have Hyper-V enabled, those latency-sensitive, high-precision applications may also have issues running in the host. This is because with virtualization enabled, the host OS also runs on top of the Hyper-V virtualization layer, just as guest operating systems do. However, unlike guests, the host OS is special in that it has direct access to all the hardware, which means that applications with special hardware requirements can still run without issues in the host OS.

Next step

Install Hyper-V on Windows 10

Frequently asked questions

• What is a virtualization machine? Is it the same as a virtual machine?

  The process of creating a software-based, or "virtual" version of something—whether that be compute, storage, networking, servers, or apps—is called virtualization. Virtualization as a technology enjoys a lengthy history, and today, it's still very relevant to building a cloud computing strategy. So, virtualization is the process, and the machines made using that process are most commonly called virtual machines or just VMs.

• Multiple virtual machines can run simultaneously on the same physical computer, all managed by a hypervisor. A hypervisor is the software that integrates the physical hardware and the VM's virtual "hardware". This is very similar to how an operating system in a typical computer works: much like a school crossing guard helps multiple students move safely back and forth across a busy intersection, the hypervisor makes sure each VM gets the resources it needs from the physical server in an orderly and timely manner.

• What is infrastructure as a service (IaaS)?

  This is the foundational category of cloud computing services. With IaaS, you rent IT infrastructure—servers and virtual machines (VMs), storage, networks, and operating systems—on a pay-as-you-go basis from a cloud provider such as Microsoft Azure.

  Learn more about IaaS

• Are Azure Virtual Machines different than other VMs?

  Yes, and no! Azure Virtual Machines is the Azure infrastructure as a service (IaaS) used to deploy persistent VMs with nearly any VM server workload that you want. They are image service instances that provide on-demand and scalable computing resources with usage-based pricing.

  So, Azure Virtual Machines is the service that provides VMs optimized for general purpose or storage, memory, compute, and graphics-intensive workloads and are offered in a variety of types and sizes to meet your needs and keep your budget in check.

  Learn more about Azure IaaS

• Spot VMs are part of services offered by a cloud provider, such as Microsoft Azure, that provides scalable compute capacity at deep discounts.

  Spot VMs are ideal for workloads that can be interrupted, such as:

  • Select high-performance computing scenarios, batch processing jobs, or visual rendering applications.
  • Dev/test environments, including continuous integration and continuous delivery workloads.
  • Big data, analytics, container-based, large-scale stateless applications.
  
  

  Learn more about Azure Spot Virtual Machines

• What is Azure Disk Storage?

  Azure Disk Storage is a service offering high-performing, highly durable block storage designed to be used with Azure Virtual Machines. With unmatched resiliency, seamless scalability, and built-in security, Azure Disk Storage delivers the price-performance you need for your mission and business-critical apps.

  Learn more about Azure Disk Storage

• How does hybrid cloud computing work with Azure?

  In general, hybrid cloud computing refers to a cloud environment that combines public cloud and on-premises infrastructure, including private cloud, by allowing data and apps to be shared between them. It expands your cloud deployment options, offering greater flexibility to scale resources and take advantage of cloud tech innovations, while giving interoperability with on-prem environments.

  Get an intro to public, private, and hybrid clouds

• What is a cloud computing "stack"?

  Cloud services providers sometimes call cloud computing services a "stack", because they build on top of one another. While infrastructure as a service (IaaS) represents the foundational element in the stack, other services are often used together with IaaS, such as platform as a service (PaaS), software as a service (SaaS), and serverless computing.

  Learn more common cloud computing terms

Virtualization is the process of creating a software-based, virtual representation of a physical IT resource. Applications, servers, desktops, storage devices and networks can all be virtualized. Virtualization has become the most effective way for businesses of all sizes to reduce IT expenses and increase efficiency. Virtualization can also increase IT agility, flexibility and scalability. Workloads get deployed faster, performance and availability increase, and operations can become automated in a virtualized environment. Virtualization helps simplify IT management, reduce capital and operating costs, minimize downtime and ensure business continuity.

Virtualization uses software to simulate the existence of hardware and create a virtual computer system or virtual machine (VM) that acts like an actual computer. Businesses can run more than one virtual system – and multiple operating systems and applications — on a single physical server, known as the host. Each self-contained VM is completely independent. Software executed on a virtual machine is separated from the underlying hardware resources. Putting multiple VMs on a single computer enables several operating systems and applications to run on just one host machine. A thin layer of software called a hypervisor decouples the virtual machines from the host and dynamically allocates computing resources to each VM as needed. In addition to running multiple operating systems on one physical computer, virtual machines can divide system resources among other VMs for greater load balancing.

For fault tolerance and disaster recovery, virtual machines can be isolated from other software and hardware. The entire state of a virtual machine can be saved to a file, allowing VMs to be copied and moved as easily as moving and copying files. Virtualization allows any virtual machine to be provisioned or migrated to any physical server. This enables server consolidation and lowers hardware costs by using fewer physical machines. IT organizations move workloads to virtual environments to leverage under-utilized hardware, lower hardware acquisition and maintenance costs, save data center space, and reduce power consumption. SUSE Linux Enterprise Server is the most affordable operating system to use in virtual environments, as it ships with Xen and Kernel Virtual Machine (KVM), the two most widely used open source hypervisors.