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Linux on Hyper-V: SMP Support

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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!

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