Geek Sheet: Virtualizing Free Linux Distributions in Windows Server 2008 R2 | Linux Today

Geek Sheet: Virtualizing Free Linux Distributions in Windows Server 2008 R2

Written By
JP
Jason Perlow
Aug 10, 2009

[ Thanks to Jason
Perlow
for this link. ]

“Over the last week or so, I’ve been putting the
release code of Windows Server 2008 R2 as well as the free Hyper-V
Server 2008 R2 release candidate through their paces and running a
combination of both Windows and Linux virtual machines on them. The
free Linux distributions I have had most success with running the
Hyper-V LinuxICs on are CentOS 5.3, Scientific Linux 5.3, and
OpenSUSE 11.1. In my limited testing, I only used 64-bit versions,
because Windows Server 2008 R2 is 64-Bit only and I wanted to fully
take advantage of the processing capability and native 64-bit
virtualization of Hyper-V. However, the LinuxIC’s should also
install fine on the 32-bit versions of these systems.

“CentOS 5.3 and Scientific Linux 5.3 are both source code clones
of Red Hat Enterprise Linux, so there are only minor differences in
how the LinuxIC’s are installed on them compared to how it is done
in RHEL. OpenSUSE 11.1’s installation procedure is also very
similar to SLES, but like the other two there are some minor
changes. However, these small differences were learned through a
good number of hours of troubleshooting, so as long as you follow
these steps, you won’t run into the pitfalls I ran into.”

Complete
Story

JP

Jason Perlow

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