Linux on Hyper-V: SMP Support
I mentioned in my last post that Microsoft now has multi-processor support for Linux VMs on top of Hyper-V (yeah!). The beta updates to the Linux Integration Services (aka Integration Components / ICs) was big enough new to be picked up by big time Microsoft watchers.
There are three enhancements in the beta release of the Integration Service for Linux:
- SMP (multiprocessor) support
- Time Sync
- Shutdown Integration
Mike Sterling posted to the Virtualization team blog with details, and Brett Shoemaker blogged on Port 25 with a link to to the download. I know both of them really well if you have any questions (I wrote a Hyper-V book with Mike, and Brett and I are on the same team).
Yes, everyone thinks SMP is a big deal for Linux on Hyper-V. I agree, but I’m more excited about the other two feature (why? that’ll be in a future post – I promise).
Just to get the SMP piece out of the way, let me say that the installation of the Integration Services (ISs / ICs) is via the same process. Mount the ISO image in the VM, copy the contents to a directory (/opt/linux_ISs) and run perl setup.pl drivers, and reboot.
What do you get? Reliable multi-processor support for Linux on Hyper-V – up to 4 virtual CPUs!