![]() A type 1 hypervisor communicates directly with the system’s hardware at the bare metal level. In contrast, Hyper-V is a type 1 hypervisor. ![]() These performance issues can be directly attributed to the fact that the virtualized environment was emulated and that the host operating system acted as a gateway between the hypervisor and the hardware. I previously mentioned that some of the earlier versions of Virtual PC did not perform very well. All of the hardware calls must be passed through the host operating system. A type 2 hypervisor runs on top of a host operating system and the hypervisor is forbidden from communicating directly with the hardware. Virtual PC used what is known as a type 2 hypervisor. The reason for this has to do with the nature of the hypervisor. Unfortunately, Microsoft’s decision to adopt Hyper-V makes using the approach that I just described impossible. I predicted that the core operating system would be very light weight, but that Microsoft would offer plug-ins for Windows XP, Windows Vista, and Windows 7 that would make it possible to transparently run virtual instances of those operating systems. Because applications that ran in Windows XP mode became transparently available on the Windows 7 desktop it made sense that future versions of Windows would act as a user interface and a virtualization host. Long before any of the Windows 8 features were announced I had predicted that Windows 7’s Windows XP mode would become the basis for Windows 8. One of the side effects to doing so is that Windows 8 will not feature a Windows XP mode. Specifically, they have abandoned Virtual PC in favor of including Hyper-V in the desktop operating system. Microsoft has completely changed their approach to virtualization in Windows 8. Applications that were running within the virtual machine appeared to natively run on the Windows 7 desktop. In many cases, users were completely unaware that the Windows XP virtual machine even existed. What was really nice about Windows XP mode was that it was possible to install applications within a dedicated Windows XP desktop, and have those applications made available through the Windows 7 user interface. Windows XP mode was essentially a fully licensed copy of Windows XP that ran in a Virtual PC-based virtual machine. They introduced a new feature called Windows XP mode. In Windows 7 Microsoft put Virtual PC to good use. My virtualized server ran slowly, but it got the job done. To make a long story short, I used Virtual PC. I needed the ability to run Windows Server on my laptop so that I could work on the book while I was on the go, but my other operational requirements forced me to run a desktop version of Windows. A few years ago for example, I was working on a new book but I was also doing a lot of traveling. The earlier versions of Virtual PC were a bit lacking when it came to performance, but they at least gave you the ability to run virtual machines in a pinch. Microsoft has long offered a free add on called Virtual PC that made it possible to host virtual machines on desktop versions of Windows. Having the ability to run virtual machines on desktop operating systems is not new to Windows 8. A Brief History of Virtualization on the Desktop That being the case, I wanted to take the opportunity to talk about how this changes Windows and what Hyper-V on the desktop will be good for. One such feature is the inclusion of Hyper-V in the new desktop operating system. While this is certainly understandable, Windows 8 boasts a number of new features that are not related to the interface. Much of the attention that Windows 8 has received up to this point has centered around the new Metro interface and the Metro style apps. Recently there has been a lot of media hype around the upcoming release of Windows 8. If you would like to read the next part in this article series please go to Virtualization in Windows 8 – What is it Good For? (Part 2).
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