PART I: Installation of Hyper-V on a Windows 10 machine....

I like to keep up to date with the latest Microsoft technologies and generally have a number of test environments running on my home computer. These test environments grant me the ability to create different "virtual" machines each with their own unique Operating Systems and programs without effecting my main computer. Recently, I had the opportunity to sit through a Window Server 2016 preview and thought I might like to get my hands on the new fledgling OS to see what I could glean from it. This is the first part of a multi part series running through the setup of a virtual environment on Windows 10 and the installation of Windows Server 2016 Essentials Tech Preview 3 on the newly established Hyper-V environment.


Since the introduction of Windows 8 users have had the ability to run Windows Hyper-V for free on their home computers. According to the source that all good college papers are derived Wikipedia :

Hyper-V, codenamed Viridian and formerly known as Windows Server Virtualization, is a native hypervisor; it can create virtual machines on x86-64 systems. Starting with Windows 8, Hyper-V supersedes Windows Virtual PC as the hardware virtualization component of the client editions of Windows NT.

This is just a fancy way of saying that Hyper-V allows you to create a stand alone "computer" and run it along side your current Windows Desktop. In order to use Hyper V you must first meet the following requirements:

 PREREQUISITES: 

Windows 8 Pro or Enterprise 64 bit Operating System
64 bit processor with Second Level Address Translation (SLAT)
4 GB system Ram at minimum
BIOS-level Hardware Virtualization support

To determine the last prerequisite you can check if your CPU supports virtualization from here, for Intel chips, and here for an AMD. (NOTE: the AMD link will download a utility that will check the status for you - ed.).

After you have verified that your computer can run Hyper-V you can start the simple process of installing the feature:

First, go to Programs and Features by clicking the windows icon on your main desktop, found in the bottom left hand corner of your screen, and then typing "Programs and Features" in the text box. Click on "Programs and Features" when it is displayed

When presented with the next screen click on "Turn Windows features on or off" located on the left hand portion of the window. 

Within the next window you will see a Folder called "Hyper-V". By clicking on the + next to the folder it will drop down and display another two folders. put a check mark on these folders by clicking the box next to them. Then click "OK"

From here Windows will begin to install the Hyper-V service on your machine. This can take a while to complete (according to the Windows pop up box). Once this process has finished click on the windows button in the bottom left hand corner of your main desktop again and then type in "Hyper-V". Click on the icon labeled "Hyper-V Manager" 

The next window you will be presented with is the manager itself. We will use this in the next walkthroughs to install the virtual switching, the OS and log into our new virtual "computer".