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/ Michaël Hompus

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Today the Microsoft Virtualization Team announced the availability of the new beta version of the Linux Integration Services for Hyper-V. In this post I will try the new features.

Today the Microsoft Virtualization Team announced the availability of the new beta version of the Linux Integration Services for Hyper-V. There are three big changes in this version:

  • Virtual machines will be able to use up to 4 virtual CPUs.
  • Virtual machines will be able to synchronize their time with the parent partition.
  • Virtual machines will be able to shutdown gracefully from the Hyper-V manager.

In this post I will try the new features.

Linux Integration Services for Hyper-V 2.0

First, I got a Virtual Machine (VM) installed as described in my previous post “Running CentOS 5.x on Hyper-V”. I used the current released stable version of the Linux Integration Services (LIS): Version 2.0.

Screenshot displaying the VMBUS information on booting the virtual machine. Build Date=Jun 29 2009 and Build Description=Version 2.0.
On boot time, VMBUS displays 'Version 2.0'

My Hyper-V host only has a dual-core CPU. So, it is impossible for me to test the 4 CPU support. I could not find any differences with 2 CPUs.

Shutdown from Hyper-V Console

With the current version of the LIS when I press the shutdown button, I get the following error:

Screenshot displaying the Hyper-V console showing the error text: "The application encountered an error while attempting to change the state of 'BlogDemo'. Failed to shut down the virtual machine.".
Hyper-V Console shows the error 'Failed to shut down the virtual machine'.

Time synchronization

With the current version of the LIS I had a lot of trouble with the clock of the VM getting out of sync very fast. I did a post to fix this: “Correcting time drift with CentOS on Hyper-V”.

I did not implement the mentioned fix on the VM I created for this post, to demonstrate the problem:

Screenshot displaying the Hyper-V console showing the VM gets a time difference of multiple=
The VM gets an offset of multiple seconds within minutes.

Linux Integration Services for Hyper-V 2.1 Beta

To get the beta drivers you need to download them from the Microsoft Connect website.

I installed the new drivers in exact the same way as the 2.0.

Screenshot displaying the VMBUS information on booting the virtual machine. Build Date=Mar 23 2010 and Build Description=Version 2.1.2.
On boot time, VMBUS displays Version 2.1.2

Not only the new version number is displayed, also the new Shutdown and Timesync channels are mentioned!

Shutdown from Hyper-V Console

Pressing the shutdown button now gives a more expected result:

Screenshot displaying the virtual machine has received the shutdown command and starts the power-off sequence.
The VM receives the signal to shut down and calls `/sbin/poweroff`
Screenshot displaying the Hyper-V console with the message: "The virtual machine is turned off".
The VM is gracefully turned off.

Time synchronization

With the new LIS the time is pretty much stable, nothing the NTP service cannot handle. There is no need to change the boot command in grub anymore.

Screenshot displaying the Hyper-V console showing the VM shows minimal time difference over the course of minutes.
The VM only shows a minimal time difference over the course of minutes.
Filed under Hyper-V
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