Hyper-V Nested Virtualization in Windows 10

Hyper-V Nested Virtualization in Windows 10

Microsoft release the build 10565 last week for insiders on fast ring which contains a preview of nested virtualization. This allow you to install Hyper-V in a guest virtual machine and running other guest VM on this new Hypervisor. You can also run multiple Hyper-V server on the same physical machine. It’s perfect for your demos and lab test !

Because it’s a preview, there are some known issues :

• Both hypervisors need to be the latest versions of Hyper-V on windows 10 build 10565. 
• Dynamic memory must be OFF. This will prevent the VM from booting.
• Runtime memory resize will fail.
• Applying checkpoints to a running VM will fail.
• VM which hosts other VMs cannot be live migrated.
• Save/restore will fail.
• Once nested virtualization is enabled in a VM, MAC spoofing must be enabled for networking to work in its guests.
• Hosts with Virtualization Based Security (VBS) enabled cannot expose virtualization extensions to guests. You must first disable VBS in order to preview nested virtualization.
• This feature is currently Intel-only. Intel VT-x is required.
• You need at least 4 GB of host RAM.

For more details, visit this page.

Now let’s get started :

1- Create a VM

2- Run the enablement script.

This script will check your configuration,and enable nested virtualization for a VM. The VM must be off.

Invoke-WebRequest https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Microsoft/Virtualization-Documentation/master/hyperv-tools/Nested/Enable-NestedVm.ps1 -OutFile ~/Enable-NestedVm.ps1
~/Enable-NestedVm.ps1 -VmName <VmName>

3- Install Hyper-V in the guest

Set-VMNetworkAdapter -VMName <VMName> -MacAddressSpoofing on

4- Option : Enable networking
Remember, MAC Spoofing must be enabled once nested virtualization is enabled.
Run this command on the host as an administrator to enable networking :

Set-VMNetworkAdapter -VMName"VName"-MacAddressSpoofing on

5- Create nested VMs !