I should also note that Hyper-V is available as a feature in Windows 8 and above. It’s
the same Hyper-V code that is running in Windows Server; it is just missing some of
the features that make no sense on a client operating system, such as virtual Fibre
Channel, SR-IOV, Live Migration, and Hyper-V Replica. It’s the same hypervisor using
the same virtual hard disk formats, which means that you can take a virtual machine
running on Windows 10 Hyper-V and run it on Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V with no
changes required. You can even move in the opposite direction.
On the server side, you should make sure that servers are sized accordingly, based on
the desired usage, and that they have the required network and storage connectivity.
Processors are required to support hardware-assisted virtualization (Intel VT or AMD-
V) and data execution prevention in the form of the Intel XD bit (execute disable bit)
or AMD NX bit (no execute bit). The good news is that any server processor released
since 2007 should definitely have these capabilities, and likely even older processors
(the capability was added to Intel and AMD processors in 2005 and 2006,
respectively).
Prior to Windows Server 2016, it was beneficial to have Second Level Address
Translation (SLAT) for improved performance. It allows the processor to handle
mapping of physical memory to virtual machine memory, which otherwise has to be
handled by the hypervisor, increasing resource usage of the hypervisor. Intel calls this
technology Extended Page Tables (EPT), and AMD calls it Rapid Virtualization
Indexing (RVI). It was a required feature only when using RemoteFX GPU
virtualization and the client versions of Hyper-V. In Windows Server 2016, this is now
a requirement for base Hyper-V functionality, which means that very old servers may
no longer be able to run the Hyper-V role.
To check your server processors’ capabilities, download coreinfo.exe from:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/cc835722.aspx
and execute with the -v switch, which shows virtualization-related processor features.
A * means that the feature is present; a - means that it is missing.
PS C:\temp> .\Coreinfo.exe ‐v
Coreinfo v3.31 - Dump information on system CPU and memory topology
Copyright (C) 2008-2014 Mark Russinovich
Sysinternals - www.sysinternals.com
Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2660 v3 @ 2.60GHz
Intel64 Family 6 Model 63 Stepping 2, GenuineIntel
Microcode signature: 00000036
HYPERVISOR - Hypervisor is present
VMX Supports Intel hardware-assisted virtualization
EPT Supports Intel extended page tables (SLAT)
Provided that you see a * for the hardware-assisted virtualization, your system is
capable of running Hyper-V.
Using Configuration Levels