Why use Hyper-V on your Windows 11 machine?

One of the biggest reasons that you might want to use Hyper-V is that it's free andincluded in your Windows 11 Pro or Enterprise license. Other virtualization software often requires you to pay extra. Even if some technologies are free -- for example, VMware Workstation -- you must download and register the software. The enrollment process for Hyper-V is quite straightforward for Windows administrators.

Virtualization is most often hosted on specialized servers withmany CPU cores and plenty of RAM, so why would you want to run Hyper-V on your own Windows 11 machine? There are many good scenarios for this.

Security

An excellent use of Hyper-V is tocreate a VM to work within. This way, you can separate work and private software. You can even sandbox the machine on the network to only let it connect to company resources. Many viruses or ransomware still come through phishing email or messenger apps.

The risk of viruses and ransomware is much lower if you don't have social media or e-mail on the VM. Also, the chance of spreading it to the company network is lower. IT administrators, especially those who connect directly from their workstations to servers and the company back end, should consider doing this from a secure VM.

Lab testing

Another good use of Hyper-V is a lab environment to test changes and updates to software. You can have a VM with company software and install the update first on the VM. Then, you can go through a testing procedure before installing the update on all computers in the company network.

A major advantage of using Hyper-V isits ability to create checkpoints, which are snapshots of the VM, and bring the VM directly back to that point. You can quickly test out an update, and if it doesn't work, you can just set back the VM to the checkpoint. Then, it's immediately ready for another test.

Education and training

Often when you are engaging with IT training from vendors, you will learn about new things that your company doesn't use or take advantage of. Creating a VM on your own workstation to go through the training material can be an easy way to learn via hands-on work. Checkpoints can quickly reset these training machines to a clean state to let you do a different exercise or retry a lesson.

Prerequisites for Hyper-V on Windows 11

Running Hyper-V on a Windows 11 machine does have a few prerequisites, which are the following:

• Windows 11 Pro or Enterprise 64-bit operating system.
• A 64-bit processor with Second Level Address Translation.
• A minimum of 4 GB of RAM.
• BIOS-level hardware virtualization support.

To check if your system meets these requirements, start up the Task Manager by right-clicking on the taskbar. In the CPU part of the performance tab, see if the processor has virtualization enabled. It's in the bottom right corner under Logical processors, as shown in Figure 1.

Most modern CPUs and motherboards support virtualization by default, but it might be disabled.

You can change the virtualization setting in your machine's BIOS. The best way to do this is to Google your motherboard type or laptop manufacturer for "[insert brand and model] change BIOS CPU virtualization setting." This should provide manual or guided steps to change the virtualization feature of your CPU.

In the performance tab, you can also see if you have enough RAM to use Hyper-V. In Figure 1, there is a total of 15.9 GB, which exceeds the 4 GB needed. If the prerequisites are met, you can enable Hyper-V.

3 methods to enable Hyper-V on Windows 11

There are three waysto enable Hyper-V. The first method revolves around Windows features. You can find this by searching for Windows features in the start menu. This will bring up the features window and allow you to turn features on or off. Scroll to Hyper-V and check the boxes for Hyper-V, shown in Figure 2. Then clickOK and the Hyper-V installation will start. After the installation, you will be advised to reboot the machine.

You can also use the following command prompt to enable Hyper-V:

DISM /Online /Enable-Feature /All /FeatureName:Microsoft-Hyper-V

After thisDeployment Image Servicing and Management command runs, you will be prompted to restart the machine.

The last way to enable Hyper-V on your system is to use the PowerShell command:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V-All

After the PowerShell script, you will be prompted to reboot the machine.

To start using Hyper-V, you will need to start the Hyper-V manager. This tool is installed when enabling Hyper-V on the system in the last step. To start the Hyper-V manager, you can search the start menu for Hyper-V, which will prompt you to open the Hyper-V manager.

How to manage Hyper-V on Windows 11

In the Hyper-V manager, you can change global settings, create andmanage multiple VMs, and set up virtual networking. If this is your first time using Hyper-V, look over the global settings and check the networking settings to see if they fit your use case.

To access the global settings, click onHyper-V Settings...in the Hyper-V manager, on the right side under actions, or in the top bar under actions (Figure 3).

The settings you can change here will affect how the VMs are created. There are two settings that have the most significant effect on your Hyper-V system. First, the virtual hard disk setting is where theVHDs are created for your VMs. You can browse to a different HDD or SSD location in your system to save these files, as shown in Figure 4. The VHD files can grow into large files and require available storage.

The second setting to check is Virtual Machines, shown just below the Virtual Hard Disks setting in Figure 4. This is the location where VM configuration files are saved. Most of the time, you should save these in the same location as the VHDs.

Networking for Hyper-V VMs

The network is an integral part of Hyper-V because itworks with virtual network switches, which you can set to different access levels. To access the Virtual Switch Manager, click onActions in the Hyper-V manager or on the right-side action pane under Hyper-V settings.

Hyper-V will always create a default network switch. This will be an internal switch with NAT enabled.

From there, you can create three types of switches: external, internal, or private (Figure 5). Understanding the differences between these switches and selecting the correct one for your environment is essential.

Private switch

A private switch allows only communication between VMs on this private switch. It stops communication between the VM and the host.

Internal switch

An internal switch allows communication between all VMs on the switch and connection to the host. It can also communicate with the host and use its internet connection through NAT.

External switch

An external switch requires its own physical network adapter and can be used to separate the Virtual Machine and Host Networks.

How to create a VM with Hyper-V

After enabling Hyper-V and setting up the network and global settings, you can create a VM. Before you begin,you need an ISO of the OS you want to install. This example uses an ISO of Windows Server 2022.

To start creating a VM, select Action > New > Virtual Machine in the Action menu (Figure 6).

This will bring up the New Virtual Machine Wizard. On the first screen, clickNext. Then, specify a name for the VM. You can also choose to store the VM in a different location than the one set in the global settings (Figure 7). After entering a name, click onNext.

This will bring you to the Generation selection screen. For modern OSes such as Windows 2022 or Windows 11, you can go with Generation 2 -- older OSes or 32-bit OSes require Generation 1. After selecting the right generation, click on Next.

Next, assign the VM the right amount of startup memory. If you check the Dynamic Memory box, the VM will not take all the RAM of the host assigned to it but only the memory it is using at the moment (Figure 8).After setting the right amount for your deployment, clickNext.

On the next screen, select which virtual network switch the VM will connect to. Select the switch you decided on and clickNext.

After that, you need to configure the VHD for the VM. Select the option to create a new disk. By default, it will choose the location of the global Hyper-V settings to save the virtual hard drive. These VHDX files are dynamic and will only require the storage they use, not the maximum storage they can be (Figure 9). After setting up the disk, clickNext.

The last thing to do is select the ISO from which you want to install our OS on the VM, clickNext, andFinish. Now that the VM is created, you can connect to it and install the OS in the VM. To do this, right-click on the VM in the Hyper-V Manager and clickConnect.

After connecting, you can start the VM by pressing the green power button in the upper left corner (see Figure 10) or by clicking onAction and selectingStart.

The VM will now boot from the ISO and is ready to install the OS.

After the OS installation you don't need to install extra drivers, as is the case with many other virtualization tools. Because Hyper-V is a Microsoft product, the drivers are alreadyincluded in the Windows OS.

How to manage a VM in Windows 11

With a VM up and running, you can perform all administrative tasks from the Hyper-V Manager. In the Hyper-V Manager's Virtual Machines pane, you can see a list of all VMs created in Hyper-V (Figure 11).

By right-clicking on the VM, you can start it, suspend it, or shut it down. Hyper-V also allows admins to pause and reset a VM. One other important option that Hyper-V offers is Checkpoints, which are snapshots of the VM that allow you to reset the VM to the point in time the checkpoint created.

You can create and manage a checkpoint by right-clicking on the VM, where you can select Checkpoint -- which will create a new point in time -- or Revert, which allows you to restore an earlier state of the VM.

Chris Twiest works as a technology officer at RawWorks in the Netherlands, focusing on the future Workspace and Cloud technologies for the end user.