Installing the Hyper-V R2 Linux Integration Components inside a Linux Virtual Machine provides the following features:
- Optimized Drivers: The Linux integration components include support for storage and network controllers specifically optimized for Hyper-V R2.
- Fastpath Boot Support: Boot devices now take advantage of the storage VSC to provide enhanced performance.
- Timesync: The clock inside the virtual machine will remain synchronized with the clock on the host.
- Integrated Shutdown: Virtual machines running Linux can be shut down from either Hyper-V Manager or System Center Virtual Machine Manager, using the “Shut Down” command .
- Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) Support: Up to 4 virtual processors (VP) per virtual machine.
- Heartbeat: Allows the host to detect whether the guest is running and responsive.
- Pluggable Time Source: A pluggable clock source module is included to provide a more accurate time source to the guest. ( Not supported on 64-bit RHEL ( and by extension CentOS) see the workaround below.
Step 1. Download the Linux Integration Components for Hyper-V R2
First download the integration components download them from Microsoft. You will have to do this form a Windows Machine as it is .EXE file that must be clicked on to extra the ISO image.
Step 2. Mount the ISO image in the Virtual Machine
Mount the ISO image to your existing CentOS/RHEL Virtual Machine executable like below:
Step 3. Prepare your Virtual Machine to Build the Integration Components
Snapshot your VM and have a backup so you can roll back if something goes wrong, don’t do this on a production VM.
Next, you will want to make sure you are running the latest kernel before installing the IC components. Note each time you upgrade the kernel, you will have to rebuild.
yum update reboot
The development tools are also needed to compile the IC components
yum install kernel-devel yum groupinstall "development tools"
Finally, we can build the Linux IC components with these commands:
Step 4. Build the IC Components
cp -pR /media/CDROM /tmp/ cd /tmp/CDROM make make install
Step 5. Install timekeeping fix and reboot
yum install adjtimex shutdown -r now
Step 6. Check the kernel modules reloaded on reboot
Check that the vmbus kernel module loaded on startup with this command:
/etc/init.d/vmbus status
Step 7. Turn off eth0, enable seth0
You can now use the
setup
command to configure the networking for seth0, and then configure the the old legacy “eth0” interface to not start on boot (set “ONBOOT=no” in /etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifcfg-eth0 using the VI editor).
Finally restart the networking with
/etc/init.d/network restart