14 DAY TRIAL // The Linux Integration Components for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V are now live on the Microsoft Download Center, and up for grabs as version 1.0. Prior to being offered through the Download Center, the Linux Integration Components could be accessed only via Microsoft Connect. What Microsoft is essentially delivering is a set of drivers, designed to enable synthetic device support for virtual machines running supported distributions of the Linux open-source operating system in virtual machines under the Windows Server 2008 hypervisor.
The Linux Integration Components have to be installed on Hyper-V machines running Linux in order to permit customers to leverage: driver support for synthetic devices, hypercall adapter, and Fastpath Boot Support. “The Linux integration components include support for both the synthetic network controller and synthetic storage controller that have been developed specifically for Hyper-V. These components take advantage of the new high-speed bus, VMBus, which was developed for Hyper-V,” Microsoft revealed.
As far as Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V is concerned, Microsoft’s list of supported Linux distributions includes only SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP2 x86 and x64 editions and SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 SP1 x86 and x64 editions. The Redmond company is, however, working with Red Hat in order to add support for Red Hat Linux distros with its virtualization technology. The Linux Integration Components for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V are available for download in a variety of languages including English, German, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Russian, Portuguese, and Chinese.
“The Hypercall adapter is a thin layer of software that translates the Xen-specific virtualization function calls from a Xen-enabled Linux kernel to Microsoft Hyper-V hypercalls. This results in improved performance for the Linux virtual machine,” the software giant added. “Boot devices now take advantage of the storage VSC to provide enhanced performance.”
Linux Integration Components for Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V are available for download here. (additional languages here)