Solved Will W11 run on Hypervisor by default?

Hi, I've recently watched this video about WSL (quite interesting). Admittedly, I didn't know anything about WSL 2.0 other than the fact that W11 would magically support android apps through the amazon store etc. Just to summarize, the video states that with WSL 2.0 both the Windows and android kernel run on top of the Hypervisor, which might introduce a small performance loss etc.

I haven't been able to find complete information about this yet, does anyone know if Windows will run on the Hypervisor even if I don't install the Windows Subsystem for Android stuff (in which I'm not interested)? I'd love not to have the additional overhead for a feature I don't want

Thanks to anyone who will try to help :)

fruh said:

Hi, I've recently watched this video about WSL (quite interesting). Admittedly, I didn't know anything about WSL 2.0 other than the fact that W11 would magically support android apps through the amazon store etc. Just to summarize, the video states that with WSL 2.0 both the Windows and android kernel run on top of the Hypervisor, which might introduce a small performance loss etc.

I haven't been able to find complete information about this yet, does anyone know if Windows will run on the Hypervisor even if I don't install the Windows Subsystem for Android stuff (in which I'm not interested)? I'd love not to have the additional overhead for a feature I don't want

Thanks to anyone who will try to help :)

Click to expand...

You are correct about the hypervisor layer. If you do not need Hyper-V or WSL 2.0, then you do not need the hypervisor layer, and you can disable it (by default it is off anyway). However, when I have done tests, the performance reduction with the hypervisor on is tiny.

So, in the end, it does not really matter that much. I guess for a gamer trying to squeeze last bit out of performance, then it could make a difference.

Incidentally, the hypervisor on Windows is a type 1 hypervisor. So if you activate Hyper-V (say) or WSL 2.0, then all virtual machines sit on top of of the hypervisor, with Windows alongside.

This is different to a type 2 hypervisor e.g. if you run virtualbox, the type 2 hypervisor sits between windows and the virtual machines.

Type 1 hypervisors are more efficient than type 2 as a rule.

As I use Hyper-V, the hypervisor is always on, but it has never had any significant impact on Windows.

In the end, you can try it with or without and benchmark it yourself.

@cereberus thanks a lot for the explanation, didn't know about hypervisor type 1 and 2 and sounds really interesting anyway :)

I do believe the performance difference is small but my the fact that my PC does not have extra overhead if I don't install WSL/WSL etc makes me more comfortable nonetheless. Glad I only have to disable Hyper-V functionality to do that

Thanks again :)

cereberus said:

You are correct about the hypervisor layer. If you do not need Hyper-V or WSL 2.0, then you do not need the hypervisor layer, and you can disable it (by default it is off anyway). However, when I have done tests, the performance reduction with the hypervisor on is tiny.

So, in the end, it does not really matter that much. I guess for a gamer trying to squeeze last bit out of performance, then it could make a difference.

Incidentally, the hypervisor on Windows is a type 1 hypervisor. So if you activate Hyper-V (say) or WSL 2.0, then all virtual machines sit on top of of the hypervisor, with Windows alongside.

This is different to a type 2 hypervisor e.g. if you run virtualbox, the type 2 hypervisor sits between windows and the virtual machines.

Type 1 hypervisors are more efficient than type 2 as a rule.

As I use Hyper-V, the hypervisor is always on, but it has never had any significant impact on Windows.

In the end, you can try it with or without and benchmark it yourself.

Click to expand...

Hmmm. In Windows 11, I've always though that Windows 11 Hyper-V was a Type 2 Hypervisor, just like any of the others that install in the OS (VirtualBox, VMPlayer, etc.)- because they install inside the OS.

My understanding, and please correct me if I'm mistaken, is that Type 1 is a bare-metal install, like ProxMox, or the Windows Server Hyper-V edition, or something like that, and Type 2 are all hypervisors that are install after an OS is installed, like any Hypervisor install *inside* Windows 10, or Window 11, or any chosen Linux distribution.

Were these definitions of Type 1 and and Type 2 Hypervisors recently changed?

johnlgalt said:

Hmmm. In Windows 11, I've always though that Windows 11 Hyper-V was a Type 2 Hypervisor, just like any of the others that install in the OS (VirtualBox, VMPlayer, etc.)- because they install inside the OS.

My understanding, and please correct me if I'm mistaken, is that Type 1 is a bare-metal install, like ProxMox, or the Windows Server Hyper-V edition, or something like that, and Type 2 are all hypervisors that are install after an OS is installed, like any Hypervisor install *inside* Windows 10, or Window 11, or any chosen Linux distribution.

Were these definitions of Type 1 and and Type 2 Hypervisors recently changed?

Click to expand...

Hyper-V is a type 1 hypervisor. Many people have the mistaken belief that when they "install" Hyper-V in Windows 10/11 that it is getting installed in the traditional sense, such as a program or an app that the host OS is running. That is not the case when you enable the Hyper-V feature in Windows 10/11. When you enable Hyper-V in Windows 10/11 what you are doing is enabling access to the Hyper-V server through Windows 10/11. Windows 10/11 becomes the parent or root partition in Hyper-V which provides the GUI. The VMs created become child partitions which are running directly on Hyper-V in parallel with the "host" Windows 10/11.


Think of Hyper-V as the Linux kernel that is running by itself - you only get a command line interface. Windown 10/11 is like adding a desktop environment to Hyper-V just like adding a desktop environment to the Linux kernel. That is also why you can download and run the Hyper-V "kernel" by itself from Microsoft (actually for free), and all you get with it is a command line interface.

johnlgalt said:

Hmmm. In Windows 11, I've always though that Windows 11 Hyper-V was a Type 2 Hypervisor, just like any of the others that install in the OS (VirtualBox, VMPlayer, etc.)- because they install inside the OS.

My understanding, and please correct me if I'm mistaken, is that Type 1 is a bare-metal install, like ProxMox, or the Windows Server Hyper-V edition, or something like that, and Type 2 are all hypervisors that are install after an OS is installed, like any Hypervisor install *inside* Windows 10, or Window 11, or any chosen Linux distribution.

Were these definitions of Type 1 and and Type 2 Hypervisors recently changed?

Click to expand...

You are rather confusing the HyperV gui installation with the Hypervisor. So strictly HyperV is a gui that allows access to the type 1 hypervisor but in the end that is really semantics. @NavyLCDR's description is indeed correct.

When the type 1 hypervisor is running, Windows in effect becomes a virtual machine in parallel with any other virtual machines.

You do not need the hypervisor to be running if not using vms or similar like WSL 2.0.

Type 2 are completely different. The hypervisor sits on top of windows, and any other vms sit on top of the hypervisor (3 layers) unlike type 1 which only has two layers.

Vms running on a type 1 hypervisor has direct access to hardware resources. Vms running on type 2 only have access via Windows.

I nearly always use a type 1 hypervisor (Hyper-V) mostly for Windows vms.

I only use type 2 for non Windows OSs, mainly because few can be installed in HyperV enhanced mode.

Despite the general belief, you can get sound on some Linux distros in Hyper-V but they all seem to suffer an audio visual time lag.

It is ok listening to music or videos where you can adjust the audio lag but not so good for direct streaming e.g. from YouTube.

So in those cases, a type 2 hypervisor is better.

Thanks, guys, for setting me straight on this. I did a lot more reading, and this link which I haven't seen before sums it up nicely in a layman friendly illustration, to go along with the one @NavyLCDR gave.


It makes more sense now, and I see that the simplified explanations given in lower level cert classes really don't do it justice.

The below quote is from a tutorial on our sister site Ten Forums:

Run Hyper-V, VirtualBox and VMware on same Computer

When hypervisor is enabled at boot of computer, only Type 1 Hypervisors like Hyper-V can run virtual machines. To run virtual machines on Type 2 Hypervisors like VirtualBox or VMware, hardware Hypervisor must be turned off.

Microsoft Hyper-V is a Type 1 Hypervisor. When a Type 1 Hypervisor is enabled, Type 2 Hypervisors (VMware Workstation, VirtualBox etc.) virtual machines cannot run. Virtual machines can be created and their settings edited both in Virtual Box and VMware Workstation, but their virtual machines can't be run. When tried, an error message tells that VM cannot be started.

Both VirtualBox and VMware error messages are quite confusing, not clearly telling what the problem is.

The same is true the other way around. When hardware Hypervisor is disabled, VirtualBox and VMware virtual machines can be started, but running a Hyper-V VM shows an error message. Contrary to messages from Virtual Box and VMware it clearly tells the cause.

This is because of the difference between Type 1 (native) Hypervisors and Type 2 (hosted) Hypervisors. Type 1 must be enabled even before operating system is loaded. When enabled, even the physical Windows installation on the host computer runs on hypervisor. Type 2, hosted Hypervisors run on top of the OS. Windows is loaded first, and hypervisor only thereafter.

An image from Wikipedia article Hypervisor shows the difference better than I could ever explain:



Problem is that because Type 1 Hypervisor needs to be enabled or disabled at boot before the OS starts loading, it can't be toggled ON / OFF live when Windows is running. It always requires a restart.

Click to expand...

Kari

Kari said:

The below quote is from a tutorial on our sister site Ten Forums:

Run Hyper-V, VirtualBox and VMware on same Computer



Kari

Click to expand...

This is only partly true now. Recent versions of vmware/virtualbox can now coexist with Hyper-v as new apis were added to the hyper-v hypervisor to allow a type 2 hypervisor to coexist.

In essence: hardware layer, type 1 hypervisor, windows layer (and hyper-v vms), type 2 hypervisor, vb/vmware vms.

However performance is reduced. At one time very slow but not so bad now.

Not all type 2 hypervisors can coexist unless they take advantage of the new hyper-v apis e.g. older versions of vb or vmware. Bluestacks android enulation can now coexist allegedly now.


I have tested the above and it certainly works albeit there is a reduction in performance.

I guess the tenforums info needs to be updated.

johnlgalt said:

Hmmm. In Windows 11, I've always though that Windows 11 Hyper-V was a Type 2 Hypervisor, just like any of the others that install in the OS (VirtualBox, VMPlayer, etc.)- because they install inside the OS.

My understanding, and please correct me if I'm mistaken, is that Type 1 is a bare-metal install, like ProxMox, or the Windows Server Hyper-V edition, or something like that, and Type 2 are all hypervisors that are install after an OS is installed, like any Hypervisor install *inside* Windows 10, or Window 11, or any chosen Linux distribution.

Were these definitions of Type 1 and and Type 2 Hypervisors recently changed?

Click to expand...

The terms type-1 and type-2 hypervisors are generally confusing and not so clear cut these days --probably they are more of a sort of Hybrid model.

However things like HYPER-V and KVM have the virtualisation modules installed in the kernel so true while an OS is needed to start the boot process the HYPERVISOR takes over the main "Task dispatcher / control" while the host OS essentially runs as just another application -- albeit a complex one.

This is how one can run a VM very efficiently especially if you can pass thru a lot of the real hardware over to the VM. Reducing the reliance on "Paravirtualised hardware" and running the VM on as much as possible of real host hardware can make the VM almost as efficient as the native HOST would be itself.

VM's on these systems can run even when the primary user has logged off the host - and users of the VM's don't even need an account on the host to access the VM.

VBOX / VMWare types of VM's rely on the OS as these are simply just another application running under OS control and are essentially single user applications running under the host Users account and probably can't run as a background process when the user logs off the host. (Vmware used to have a VM server app but I think that's long gone).

Whatever VM system you use -- and these days most machines have enough CPU power -- RAM availability is paramount -- VM's just eat RAM for breakfast, and you need the best disk I/O system, you can get, Slow disks are the bugbear of any system -- even more so in VM's.

Gamers should also use a separate dedicated graphics adapter / GPU for running games on a VM for best performance - and of course don't try and run too many concurrent VM's or applications on the host.

Note -- e.g for example you won't see a huge improvement running a single Windows system on a 64GB RAM machine with 4 separate CPU's - but running say 3 VM's concurrently assigning a real CPU to each and native disks - the VMs would probably run at almost the same speed as the HOST Windows / Linux system itself and of course could do far more work.

cheers
jimbo

Thanks for the additional insight, Kari and jimbo.

As for RAM availability - got that covered

8 VMs, of various flavors of Windows 10 and Windows 11, and all allocated 16 GB of RAM, though in practical use most never get anywhere close to that other than at startup. And when they've calmed down their activities, most use the minimum 4 GB of RAM and 4 vCPU cores I've assigned them, and I can have all 8 on at the same time, making updating a lot easier.

I suppose if I made all of them max 8 GB I could always start them up at the same time.

johnlgalt said:

I suppose if I made all of them max 8 GB I could always start them up at the same time.

Click to expand...

My host machine has 32GB RAM. My Hyper-V VMs are all assigned dynamic memory, so they get what they ask for - usually less than 2GB when not busy. For a laugh I thought I'd see just how many I could run at once. I got up to 10 before I ran out of RAM. Typically I'll work with 3 or 4 running at once.

I use dynamically assigned, but with a hard minimum of 4 GB and hard max of 16 GB, but I should probably revisit those settings now that I know they really don't need the 16 top end. Right now, if I power on more than 5 at a time, the system gets sluggish until one of them drops their usage to below 8 GB. I usually power on 4, wait a few minutes and then power on the other 4.

I'll change the hard upper limits to 8 GB and see how they do.

Yeah, I've been running VMware Workstation Pro and Hyper-V side-by-side for a couple years now. They co-exist flawlessly. Ironically, it's actually becoming less important to me as time goes by as I've been transitioning to Hyper-V.

Only thing that keeps me running VMware at times is the fact that I have about 30 different ACTIVATED configs of Windows on VMware. If I can somehow transition all those activations to Hyper-V I will do so. But that's a project for another day

Kari said:

The below quote is from a tutorial on our sister site Ten Forums:

Run Hyper-V, VirtualBox and VMware on same Computer



Kari

Click to expand...

Nice @Kari , great and simple explanation, had I known that wont have updated to Pro.
Should WHP be enabled during VMWare player install?

Regards!

hsehestedt said:

I have about 30 different ACTIVATED configs of Windows on VMware. If I can somehow transition all those activations to Hyper-V I will do so. But that's a project for another day

Click to expand...

I've needed to do that once. Linking the digital license to my Microsoft account on the old VM, then running the Activation Troubleshooter on the new VM and saying the hardware had changed did the trick.

hsehestedt said:

Yeah, I've been running VMware Workstation Pro and Hyper-V side-by-side for a couple years now. They co-exist flawlessly. Ironically, it's actually becoming less important to me as time goes by as I've been transitioning to Hyper-V.

Only thing that keeps me running VMware at times is the fact that I have about 30 different ACTIVATED configs of Windows on VMware. If I can somehow transition all those activations to Hyper-V I will do so. But that's a project for another day

Click to expand...

All of my installs (3x Windows 10, 5x Windows 11, including Dev, Beta and RP insiders, 22H2 and 21H2) are all activated as well.

Bree said:

I've needed to do that once. Linking the digital license to my Microsoft account on the old VM, then running the Activation Troubleshooter on the new VM and saying the hardware had changed did the trick.

Click to expand...

Nice. Glad it worked, neat trick.

Bree said:

I've needed to do that once. Linking the digital license to my Microsoft account on the old VM, then running the Activation Troubleshooter on the new VM and saying the hardware had changed did the trick.

Click to expand...

Thanks, Bree. That was what I was planning to try. Glad to hear that works. It's gonna be a little bit of a pain in the keister, but only need to do it once (per VM that is).

I have all those from a number of years ago. I had an MSDN subscription at the time. Back when the free upgrade from Win 7 was supposedly going to expire on a certain date, a few days before expiration, I quickly used all my 7 licenses to activate Win 10 VMs. Then I kept the UUID from the VMware config so that I could reinstall activated copies at will any time I needed to do so.

hsehestedt said:

I kept the UUID from the VMware config so that I could reinstall activated copies at will any time I needed to do so.

Click to expand...

It's a little different in Hyper-V, but you can also preserve a digital license for later use.