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Article - What is Generation in Hyper-V Manager with Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview? Read on….

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I noticed the new screen below and appears in Windows Server 2012 R2 Preview.

Virtual machine generation determines the virtual hardware and functionality presented to the virtual machine.

In Hyper-V within Windows Server 2012 R2 there are two supported virtual machine generations, generation 1 and generation 2 virtual machines.

Generation 2 virtual machines will be presented with a simplified virtual hardware model and supports Unified Extensible Firmware Interface (UEFI) firmware instead of BIOS based firmware.

Additionally the majority of emulated (legacy) devices have been removed from generation 2 virtual machines.

 

Generation in Hyper-V

Generation 1 - This virtual machine generation provides the same virtual hardware to the virtual machine as in previous versions of Hyper-V.

Generation 2 - This Virtual machine generation provides the following new functionality to a virtual machine:

  • Secure Boot (enabled by default)
  • Boot from a SCSI virtual hard drive
  • Boot from a SCSI virtual DVD drive
  • PXE boot using a standard network adapter
  • UEFI firmware support
  • IDE drives and legacy network adapter support has been removed