Hello,

I have a Windows 8.1 VM running in a Hyper-v 2012 R2 failover cluster. I need to run a Windows 7 VM inside the Windows 8.1 VM.

Can I do that? If so, how can I do this?

Thanks in advance

dmsousa

You can create a 'nested' VM (this is Hyper-V Server running within a VM that you in turn create a VM on) but you can never boot it.

Hi,

I've reached that point... What I need is to boot the nested VM...

I cannot be done? I've seen this with vmware esxi and with virtualbox...

Glad that you have seen it with other hypervisors.  It will not work on Hyper-V in this configuration.

There is no way around it.

The exact same situation exists with xen / SenServer / OracleVM - and for an extremely similar architectural reason.

Hyper-V and xen do not emulate the physical layer.  As ESX and VirtualBox do.  Thus the VM inside of the nested Hyper-V Server has no CPU resource to bind to as it has absolutely no access to the physical processor virtualization extensions.

Could this be changed?  Possibly, who knows.  But that does not represent the current situation.