Hyper-V host, Linux VM, how to get KVM to use acceleration?

[gigatexal]

So I might have a tough one here, google has not been helpful.

I have a Hyper-V host that I am happy with. I have ubuntu running on it in a VM to play around with things. I'd like to try out the new Core Ubuntu stuff. So I installed KVM on it and fired it up and found that acceleration is not enabled/availible. Is there a way, because I know my cpu's support it, L5639's, to get Hyper-V to pass the capability to the guests?

 

[TuxDude]

If you are taking about virtualization hardware-acceleration, then that is not a feature that can be passed through. Hardware support for nested hypervisors was first added to the 4th gen Core vPro processors, and is a feature called 'VMCS shadowing'.

 

[TuxDude]

I just did some reading on what Ubuntu Core actually is (I don't really like it, but that's another topic...), and there should be no need to run KVM inside of Core - no nested hypervisor, so no issues running on your current CPU. You should be able to download the KVM image from Ubuntu, convert/import it into the HyperV host, and then console or SSH into the Core guest OS - it should run plenty fast as the HyperV host does have access to the CPU's hardware acceleration features. Once inside of Core, you can install Docker and then play around with containers instead of full VMs, which will share the kernel with the Core install and not need any further acceleration.

 

[gigatexal]

That'd be likely what I would like to do, run Core on Hyper-V. Thanks for that info on nested hypervisors, I didn't know that it was limited to 4th gen and above cpus.

Thanks again!

 

[gigatexal]

i built a vhd compatible image in one of my Linux VM's and used it to create a hyper-v guest for Ubuntu-core on my hyper-v host. Pretty nifty that that was doable. The qemu-kvm for windows (compiled with mingw) didn't work, I had to use Ubuntu's.