Appendix: Microsoft Hardware Virtualization Compatibility

Hyper-V and Virtual Server differ in the hardware and OSs with which they are compatible. In general, Hyper-V only uses variants of Windows Server 2008 for its “parent partition” virtual machine (VM) (which runs device drivers for most of a computer’s hardware), while Virtual Server can use a range of current and older OSs in the analogous host OS role. According to Microsoft, all the child partition/guest OSs listed below can run in VMs hosted by its virtualization technologies. However, compatibility depends on service pack and patch levels of all the components, and some configurations limit the number of processors per VM. Furthermore, Microsoft Product Support will not support all of these configurations, and application support is similarly limited. (See “Product Support Updated in Virtual Environments“.)

	Hyper-V	Virtual Server
Hardware virtualization products	Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V Hyper-V Server 2008	Virtual Server 2005 R2 SP1
Supported