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Manage Hyper-V Integration Services

Hyper-V Integration Services enhance virtual machine performance and provide convenience features by leveraging two-way communication with the Hyper-V host. Many of these services are conveniences, such as guest file copy, while others are important to the virtual machine's functionality, such as synthetic device drivers. This set of services and drivers are sometimes referred to as integration components. You can control whether or not individual convenience services operate for any given virtual machine. The driver components are not intended to be serviced manually.

For details about each integration service, see Hyper-V Integration Services.

Important

Each service you want to use must be enabled in both the host and guest in order to function. When you enable a service in the host, it automatically starts running in the guest. All integration services except Hyper-V Guest Service Interface are on by default on Windows guest operating systems. The services can be turned on and off individually. The next sections show you how.

Turn an integration service on or off using Hyper-V Manager

  1. From the center pane, right-click the virtual machine and select Settings.

  2. From the left pane of the Settings window, under Management, select Integration Services.

The Integration Services pane lists all integration services available on the Hyper-V host, and whether the host has enabled the virtual machine to use them.

Turn an integration service on or off using PowerShell

To do this in PowerShell, use Enable-VMIntegrationService and Disable-VMIntegrationService.

The following examples demonstrate turning the guest file copy integration service on and off for a virtual machine named DemoVM.

  1. Get a list of running integration services:

    Get-VMIntegrationService -VMName "DemoVM"

  2. The output should look like this:

    VMName      Name                    Enabled PrimaryStatusDescription SecondaryStatusDescription
------      ----                    ------- ------------------------ --------------------------
DemoVM      Guest Service Interface False   OK
DemoVM      Heartbeat               True    OK                       OK
DemoVM      Key-Value Pair Exchange True    OK
DemoVM      Shutdown                True    OK
DemoVM      Time Synchronization    True    OK
DemoVM      VSS                     True    OK

  3. Turn on Guest Service Interface:

    Enable-VMIntegrationService -VMName "DemoVM" -Name "Guest Service Interface"

  4. Verify that Guest Service Interface is enabled:

    Get-VMIntegrationService -VMName "DemoVM"

  5. Turn off Guest Service Interface:

    Disable-VMIntegrationService -VMName "DemoVM" -Name "Guest Service Interface"

Checking the guest's integration services version

Some features may not work correctly or at all if the guest's integration services are not current. To get the version information for Windows, sign in to the guest operating system, open a command prompt, and run this command:

REG QUERY "HKLM\Software\Microsoft\Virtual Machine\Auto" /v IntegrationServicesVersion

Earlier guest operating systems will not have all available services. For example, Windows Server 2008 R2 guests cannot have the Hyper-V Guest Service Interface.

Start and stop an integration service from a Windows guest

In order for an integration service to be fully functional, its corresponding service must be running within the guest in addition to being enabled on the host. In Windows guests, each integration service is listed as a standard Windows service. You can use the Services applet in Control Panel or PowerShell to stop and start these services.

Important

Stopping an integration service may severely affect the host's ability to manage your virtual machine. To work correctly, each integration service you want to use must be enabled on both the host and guest. As a best practice, you should only control integration services from Hyper-V using the instructions above. The matching service in the guest operating system will stop or start automatically when you change its status in Hyper-V. If you start a service in the guest operating system but it is disabled in Hyper-V, the service will stop. If you stop a service in the guest operating system that is enabled in Hyper-V, Hyper-V will eventually start it again. If you disable the service in the guest, Hyper-V will be unable to start it.

Use Windows Services to start or stop an integration service within a Windows guest

  1. Open Services manager by running services.msc as an Administrator or by double-clicking the Services icon in Control Panel.

    Screen shot that shows the Windows Services pane

  2. Find the services that start with Hyper-V.

  3. Right-click the service you want start or stop. Select the desired action.

Use PowerShell to start or stop an integration service within a Windows guest

  1. To get a list of integration services, run:

    Get-Service -Name vmic* | FT -AutoSize

  2. The output should look similar to this:

    Status  Name               DisplayName
------  ----               -----------
Running vmicguestinterface Hyper-V Guest Service Interface
Running vmicheartbeat      Hyper-V Heartbeat Service
Running vmickvpexchange    Hyper-V Data Exchange Service
Running vmicrdv            Hyper-V Remote Desktop Virtualization Service
Running vmicshutdown       Hyper-V Guest Shutdown Service
Running vmictimesync       Hyper-V Time Synchronization Service
Stopped vmicvmsession      Hyper-V PowerShell Direct Service
Running vmicvss            Hyper-V Volume Shadow Copy Requestor

  3. Run either Start-Service or Stop-Service. For example, to turn off Windows PowerShell Direct, run:

    Stop-Service -Name vmicvmsession

Start and stop an integration service from a Linux guest

Linux integration services are generally provided through the Linux kernel. The Linux integration services driver is named hv_utils.

  1. To find out if hv_utils is loaded, use this command:

    lsmod | grep hv_utils

  2. The output should look similar to this:

    Module                  Size   Used by
hv_utils               20480   0
hv_vmbus               61440   8 hv_balloon,hyperv_keyboard,hv_netvsc,hid_hyperv,hv_utils,hyperv_fb,hv_storvsc

  3. To find out if the required daemons are running, use this command.

    ps -ef | grep hv

  4. The output should look similar to this:

    root       236     2  0 Jul11 ?        00:00:00 [hv_vmbus_con]
root       237     2  0 Jul11 ?        00:00:00 [hv_vmbus_ctl]
...
root       252     2  0 Jul11 ?        00:00:00 [hv_vmbus_ctl]
root      1286     1  0 Jul11 ?        00:01:11 /usr/lib/linux-tools/3.13.0-32-generic/hv_kvp_daemon
root      9333     1  0 Oct12 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/linux-tools/3.13.0-32-generic/hv_kvp_daemon
root      9365     1  0 Oct12 ?        00:00:00 /usr/lib/linux-tools/3.13.0-32-generic/hv_vss_daemon
user     43774 43755  0 21:20 pts/0    00:00:00 grep --color=auto hv

  5. To see what daemons are available, run:

    compgen -c hv_

  6. The output should look similar to this:

    hv_vss_daemon
hv_get_dhcp_info
hv_get_dns_info
hv_set_ifconfig
hv_kvp_daemon
hv_fcopy_daemon

    Integration service daemons that might be listed include the following. If any are missing, they might not be supported on your system or they might not be installed. Find details, see Supported Linux and FreeBSD virtual machines for Hyper-V on Windows.

    • hv_vss_daemon: This daemon is required to create live Linux virtual machine backups.
    • hv_kvp_daemon: This daemon allows setting and querying intrinsic and extrinsic key value pairs.
    • hv_fcopy_daemon: This daemon implements a file copying service between the host and guest.

Examples

These examples demonstrate stopping and starting the KVP daemon, named hv_kvp_daemon.

  1. Use the process ID (PID) to stop the daemon's process. To find the PID, look at the second column of the output, or use pidof. Hyper-V daemons run as root, so you'll need root permissions.

    sudo kill -15 `pidof hv_kvp_daemon`

  2. To verify that all hv_kvp_daemon processes are gone, run:

    ps -ef | hv

  3. To start the daemon again, run the daemon as root:

    sudo hv_kvp_daemon

  4. To verify that the hv_kvp_daemon process is listed with a new process ID, run:

    ps -ef | hv

Keep integration services up to date

We recommend that you keep integration services up to date to get the best performance and most recent features for your virtual machines. This happens for Windows guests by default if they are set up to get important updates from Windows Update. Linux guests using current kernels contain integration services built in, but there may be optional updates available. You will receive the latest integration components when you update the kernel. For more information about Linux guests, see Supported Linux and FreeBSD virtual machines for Hyper-V on Windows.

Note

The image file Integration Services disk (vmguest.iso) isn't included with Hyper-V starting with Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10 because it's no longer needed. Windows Server 2012 and older require the Data Exchange integration service. If the Data Exchange integration service can't be enabled, integration services for these guests are available from the Download Center as a cabinet (cab) file. Instructions for applying a cab are available in this Microsoft TechCommunity blog post. If your Hyper-V host is running Windows Server 2012 R2 and older, see the next section for how to install or update integration services.

Install or update integration services for Hyper-V hosts earlier than Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10

Note

This isn't required for Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10 or newer.

For Hyper-V hosts earlier than Windows Server 2016 and Windows 10, you'll need to manually install or update the integration services in the guest operating systems.

To manually install or update the integration services:

  1. Open Hyper-V Manager.

  2. Connect to the virtual machine. Right-click the virtual machine and select Connect.

  3. From the Action menu of Virtual Machine Connection, select Insert Integration Services Setup Disk. This action loads the setup disk in the virtual DVD drive. Depending on the guest operating system, you might need to start the installation manually from File Explorer.

  4. After the installation finishes, integration services are available for use.