Linux Integration Services 3.4 for Hyper-V

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When installed in a supported Linux virtual machine running on Hyper-V, the Linux Integration Services Components provide:

•Driver support: Linux Integration Services supports the network controller and the IDE and SCSI storage controllers that were developed specifically for Hyper-V.

•Fastpath Boot Support for Hyper-V: Boot devices now take advantage of the block Virtualization Service Client (VSC) to provide enhanced performance.

•Time Keeping: The clock inside the virtual machine will remain accurate by synchronizing to the clock on the virtualization server via Timesync service, and with the help of the pluggable time source device.

•Integrated Shutdown: Virtual machines running Linux can be shut down from either Hyper-V Manager or System Center Virtual Machine Manager by using the “Shut down” command.

•Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) Support: Supported Linux distributions can use multiple virtual processors per virtual machine. The actual number of virtual processors that can be allocated to a virtual machine is only limited by the underlying hypervisor.

•Heartbeat: This feature allows the virtualization server to detect whether the virtual machine is running and responsive.

•KVP (Key Value Pair) Exchange: Information about the running Linux virtual machine can be obtained by using the Key Value Pair exchange functionality on the Windows Server 2008 virtualization server.

•Integrated Mouse Support: Linux Integration Services provides full mouse support for Linux guest virtual machines.

•Live Migration: Linux virtual machines can undergo live migration for load balancing purposes.

•Jumbo Frames: Linux virtual machines can be configured to use Ethernet frames with more than 1500 bytes of payload.

•VLAN tagging and trunking: Administrators can attach single or multiple VLAN ids to synthetic network adapters.

 

*Support Linux OS: Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.7, 5.8, 6.0-6.3 x86 and x64

CentOS 5.7, 5.8, 6.0-6.3 x86 and x64

*Supported Hypervisor: Win 2008 R2 to Win 2012

*limitation: TCP offload, Volume Snapshot Backup, Dynamic memory

Important to Note:

 

  • Formatting a VHDX file with an ext3 file system might fail. To work around this issue, either use an ext4 file system, or create the .VHDX file with a smaller block size, such as 1 MB.  Using the ext4 file system is recommended for production deployments of Linux on Hyper-V.
  • Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) did not include support for 4K drives until version 6.0, so be careful when deploying 4K disks!
  • The Hyper-V bridge.sys driver is not compatible with all WI-FI routers. This might result in a virtual machine not receiving an address through DHCP – this only occurs if the virtual switch is bound to a WI-FI NIC.  The workaround is to configure the WI-FI with a static IP reservation for the WI-FI NIC, and then statically defining that IP on the WI-FI NIC.
  • If you want to use kdump functionality, configure kdump before installing the Linux Integration Services
  • If you have virtual machines configured to use more than 7 virtual processors , you should add “numa=off” to the GRUB boot.cfg to work around a known issue in the Linux kernel.
  • If you have virtual machines configured to use more than 30 GB RAM, you should add “numa=off” to the GRUB boot.cfg.

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