Virtualization of Linux on Hyper-V Joseph Greco Carnegie Mellon University jfgreco@andrew.cmu.edu ABSTRACT: Last year, Microsoft's Hyper-V server virtualization product gained increased support (with a new release of "Linux Integration Services") for certain Linux distributions, allowing for performance and reliability increases through the replacement of components of the operating system with modified versions designed to operate within a virtual machine infrastructure, similar to the support offered when running on the open-source Xen hypervisor. An enterprise already running a wholly-Microsoft infrastructure may have the need or desire to run a Linux installation, but not to setup a physical machine dedicated to that installation or a separate virtual machine infrastructure for the benefits of virtualization. For such enterprises, could comparable performance to that of Linux running directly on hardware be gained by running Linux on Hyper-V Server, and would the integration services from Microsoft make a difference in performance compared to the default state? This was tested on a relatively recent PC with methods designed to maximize load and stress the Microsoft-provided components, resulting in Hyper-V Linux guest networking performance higher than without those components, but slower overall performance in tests relative to when run on a native install.