Hyper-V

[GeoffLawrence]

I am having trouble finding a definitive answer on this. I am running VirtualBox 5.1.14 and my guest is Windows 10 Pro. As is usual with Virtual Box the OS installs and works just fine. However I am trying to run Hyper-V inside my Windows 10 guest, which it refuses to do. I appreciate this is virtualisation within virtualisation! I suspect VirtualBox does not support this, can anyone confirm or deny this please?

I have found that for non-commercial work I can use VMWare Workstation 12 Player for free and as long as I add the line:

hypervisor.cpuid.v0 = "FALSE"

to the .vmx file then VMWare supports Hyper-V in Windows Server 2016 running in a VM on my laptop (which is Windows 7). I appreciate I have switched from Windows 10 to Server 2016 there but they are similar enough that I expect both to work or not.

Any help or advise would be most welcome, I don't want to move away from VirtualBox which for me is a trusted friend!

[scottgus1]

Hyper-V inside my Windows 10 guest, which it refuses to do. I appreciate this is virtualisation within virtualisation! I suspect VirtualBox does not support this, can anyone confirm or deny this please

Confirmed.

Hyper-V requires VT-x, and Virtualbox does not pass VT-x through into the guest for another layer of virtualizer to use.

[GeoffLawrence]

That is what I thought but thanks for confirming, much appreciated.

Hopefully this will change one day and I can go back to being a pure VirtualBox user again!

[scottgus1]

I read on Stack Exchange this sage piece of advice:

If you can't solve a problem, redefine the problem.

So, why do you need to run Hyper-V inside Virtualbox? Testing?

Guests running inside a hypervisor running inside a hypervisor [sic] are going to be
S

(wait for it)

L

(wait for it)

O

(wait for it)

W

(wait for it)

.

[GeoffLawrence]

Yes, I agree, they are going to be very slow! I have considered working around the problem another way but I think this will be the easiest option for me. The reason for using Hyper-V is for Windows Phone 8 development, where the emulator runs on Hyper-V. I could install Visual Studio etc on my laptop if it were Windows 8 or higher but it is Windows 7 and I also hate the way Visual Studio takes over and installs lots of things! So a VM is the perfect option. So not ideal but it should work well enough with VMWare Workstation for what I need, which is more hobby than serious.

Glad you asked the question though, it is a very valid point.

[scottgus1]

That would be a reasonable usage, yes. Doesn't sound like there's another way to redefine that problem, other than to dual-boot your laptop to 8 or 10 and run the emulator on that OS, then speed will be better.

I wouldn't wait for VT-x pass-through to a guest, by the way. That's been asked for many times by free Virtualbox users, but the rich Oracle customers that drive development haven't needed it, so the developers haven't had any extra time to play with the idea. (you have to be rich to be an Oracle customer: developer-supported licenses are $61 a seat, 100 seat minimum, $6100 to start, eeek.)

[GeoffLawrence]

Don't worry, I was not holding my breath. Given I use VirtualBox for free, I am very grateful for everything it does do. I could dual boot as you suggest, the other option is to hook my phone up to the VM and do all my test/dev on the actual device! I concluded this was not ideal but then nothing with this is.

Thanks for your help and suggestions, much appreciated.

[michaln]

Don't worry, I was not holding my breath. Given I use VirtualBox for free, I am very grateful for everything it does do.

Thank you for having a sensible attitude, sometimes that seems all too rare around here. Some people think that if they can use a product for free, they can also dictate how it should be developed. It rarely goes over well.

[GeoffLawrence]

You're welcome! Having written software myself and contributed to open source I fully understand the time and effort it takes to develop and maintain something as large and complex as VirtualBox. I also appreciate it would be nothing/dead without corporate investment, so we should give credit where it is due.

Secondly and most importantly we should be friendly and respectful as this is what makes us a community!

I still love VirtualBox and will continue to be a happy and appreciative user, so here's to VirtualBox and its community!

Thanks Oracle, we appreciate your support.