Chapter 4. Hyper-V restrictions and support

Certification of guests running under the Microsoft Hyper-V server is conducted by Microsoft. Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 is fully certified to run under the Microsoft Hyper-V server.

4.1. Hyper-V drivers

For enhanced performance, Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 provides support for Hyper-V para-virtualized drivers. These drivers (and their kernel module name) are described in the following list:
  • Hyper-V vmbus driver (hv_vmbus) - Provides the infrastructure for other Hyper-V drivers to communicate with the hypervisor.
  • Utility driver (hv_utils) - Provides Hyper-V integration services such as shutdown, time synchronization, heartbeat and Key-Value Pair Exchange.
  • Network driver (hv_netvsc) - Provides network performance improvements.
  • Storage driver (hv_storvsc) - Increases performance when accessing storage (IDE and SCSI) devices.
  • Mouse driver (hid_hyperv) - Improves user experience by allowing mouse focus changes for a virtualized guest.
  • Clocksource driver - This driver provides a stable clock source for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.11 running within the Hyper-V platform.

Note

There is no Clocksource module, instead it is built directly into the kernel.
The Hyper-V kernel modules for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.11 are shown in the following output: 
# /sbin/lsmod | grep hv
hv_netvsc              57153  0
hv_utils               41841  0
hv_storvsc             47681  2
hv_vmbus               66105  4 hv_netvsc,hid_hyperv,hv_utils,hv_storvsc
For further information on configuring network devices, storage controllers, and for details on Linux Integration Services when running Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5 under Hyper-V, see the following document: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dn531030.aspx