Installing Hyper-V on Windows 8.1 Preview

Step- By-Step Guide to Installing Hyper-V on Windows 8.1 Preview

Part 1 Installing Hyper-V Role on Windows Server 2012 Enterprise Edition

Caution: Hyper-V only works if your BIOS/hardware/CPU supports vitalization.

If your CPU is either an Intel Core i7 or Core i5 then it is supported. Not all AMD chips are, so make sure you ask your sells rep before you purchase.

1.     First, this setup is “relatively simple” because I chose a particular setup and I repeat it often. I run SharePoint 2010 and SharePoint 2013 using Windows 8.1 laptop with a Wi-Fi Internet Connection. I install Hyper-V virtual machine in a single-server farm with SQL Server and the domain controller role on the same virtual machine. This means I can export the VM, import into a different Hyper-V instance and it all just works. Because the whole setup is self-contained, it only requires an Internet access to setup. Once setup is complete, it doesn’t require Internet access to operate. This is great for demos, webinars, conference sessions and other presentations. However, this is not the best practice for a production SharePoint install. For example, you should not install SharePoint on a domain controller in Production. 

2.     By request, here is the hardware specs for my setup: Lenovo T410 with 6GB RAM and Intel Core i5-M 540 @ 2.53 GHz. I’m allocating up to 4GB of RAM to the SharePoint VM, and 40 GB Hard drive space for the VHD. For a developer machine, I would recommended you use at least 8 GB. I’m only using 4 GB now for this demo, but on my other laptop, I will give it 8 GB.

3.      

      Install Windows 8.1 Preview. Once you have Windows 8.1 installed, go to control panel, System, and then Check Windows Updates. After updates finishes, reboot and now you are ready to proceed.

4.      

      To add the Hyper-V feature. Scroll to the top or bottom corner on the right side to open the fly out menu and then choose Settings > Control Panel > Programs and Features > Turn Windows features on or off. Then check the box next to Hyper-V and install it. Don’t worry about any of the other features I have installed, as I will go over these later.

5.     Reboot your machine when prompted.

6.     Next open Hyper-V Manager now. You will see it listed in the Start - > all Apps section in windows 8.1. I right clicked on this icon and selected to pin to Start so it would always appear. 7.

7.     Install Hyper-V switch, select Internal

Note: this was my biggest frustration with Microsoft since many blog posts and Hyper-V documents want you to add a “External” switch for internet. I found this did not work using a Wi-Fi laptop. I will show you the correct way to do this to enable internet connection to the VM along and shared folder access to quickly share files between your host laptop and virtual machine. For now just be patient, I will go over these steps later for you.

8.     Create an internal Hyper-V network, and give it an obvious name. Do not worry about the other settings you see in the figure below. I will cover that later.

9.    

Open the Network Connections folder on your host laptop (i.e. Network and Sharing Center)  Select the wireless adapter and the new Hyper-V internal network you just created, right-click one of them and choose "Bridge Connections".  After a few seconds a new item will appear in the list called "Network Bridge".

10.  Open up Hyper-V Manager manger with your VM turned off. This time go to the bottom right panel and click “Settings…” and under the Hardware section, click “Add Hardware. In the Add Hardware dialog, select Network Adapter and click Add

11.  Once added, the Network Adapter properties open. Select the Virtual Switch you created earlier. Mine is called “External Wifi” , Enable Virtual Lan Identification and select 2.

My other options are: Enable Bandwidth Management: disabled

Enable virtual machine queue: enabled

Enable IPSec task offloading: enabled

Maximum number = 512 Offloaded SA

Dynamic MAC Address

Protected network: enabled

Mirror Mode: none

12.  Restart your VM. Your VMs should instantly get access to the Internet as long as they are mapped to the new internal network you have created. 

13.  One thing I should mention though is that the use of a wireless card to provide network services to Hyper-V is not a supported configuration by Microsoft, although it does work very well :-)