RTM of Linux Integration Components for Hyper-V Now Available

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After a short delay, the RTM build of the Linux Integration Components for Hyper-V can now be downloaded from connect.microsoft.com (You need to register for this - but registration is free and easy).

These integration components contain some critical features:

  • High performance I/O drivers for networking and disk (both IDE and SCSI) for Linux under Hyper-V.
  • An integrated video / mouse driver for Linux under Hyper-V.
  • The kernel "Hypercall adapter".

A number of people have asked me what this last item is, so let me explain.  Hyper-V and Xen (an open source hypervisor based virtualization solution that you are probably aware of) have very similar architectures - despite being developed in isolation from each other.  The hypercall adapter is basically a layer that translates between the Xen hypercall API and the Hyper-V hypercall API.  This allows you to install a Xen paravirtualized Linux kernel inside the virtual machine in order to get the best performance possible.

With this release we are still only supporting SuSE Linux - however you can search the connect newsgroup to see posts from users who have successfully installed the Linux integration components on other versions of Linux.

Cheers,
Ben