Confusion related to type-1 or type-2 for Hyper-V

Question

Hi,

I have gone through some articles for understanding type-1 and type-2 hypervisor.

Moreover, I read, Hyper-V is a type-1 hypervisor.

I found here, why Hyper-V is type-1 hypervisor.

The link says,

One more thing, Hyper-V isn't actually installed on the host OS. When you install Hyper-V you think it's being installed on top of a host OS but it is not. The setup converts the original OS in something like a VM and puts the hypervisor below. This is what is called the root or parent partition of Hyper-V. That's why you experience the same speed in what you see as the "real machine" and the virtual machines.

Recently I installed Windows Server as a Guest OS and installed Hyper-V role in Windows Server. I think, this is called nested

virtualization. If above explanation is justified, what about in case of nested virtualization?

With Regards
NndnG

Answer 1

Hi,

Please check if the following explanation could clarify clearly:

Type-1, native or bare-metal hypervisors

These hypervisors run directly on the host's hardware to control the hardware and to manage guest operating systems. For this reason, they are sometimes called bare metal hypervisors. The first hypervisors, which IBM developed in the 1960s, were native hypervisors.[4] These included the test software SIMMON and the CP/CMS operating system (the predecessor of IBM's z/VM). Modern equivalents include AntsleOS,[5] Microsoft Hyper-V and Xbox One system software, Nutanix AHV, XCP-ng, Oracle VM Server for SPARC, Oracle VM Server for x86, POWER Hypervisor[6] and VMware ESXi (formerly ESX) and Xen.

Type-2 or hosted hypervisors

These hypervisors run on a conventional operating system (OS) just as other computer programs do. A guest operating system runs as a process on the host. Type-2 hypervisors abstract guest operating systems from the host operating system. Parallels Desktop for Mac, QEMU, VirtualBox, VMware Player and VMware Workstation are examples of type-2 hypervisors.

Type 1 virtualization changes the host system's architecture, while Type 2 virtualization likes we installed a program on the host system, the host system architecture won't change.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hypervisor

Hyper V Nested virtualization, for example, We install Hyper V role on a physical server, then on the Hyper V manager, we created a VM1, then we enable nested virtualization, after that we can install hyper v role on VM1, then in the VM1 system, we open Hyper V manager, install netested VMM1 on VM1. Nested virtualization means two-layer virtualization.

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-windows/user-guide/nested-virtualization

If there's anything unclear, please feel free to let me know.

Thanks for your time!
Best Regards,
Anne

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Answer 2

Yes, windows hyper-v is a type one hypervisor. Some info here on running nested virtualization.
https://www.nakivo.com/blog/hyper-v-nested-virtualization-explained/

but normally is not needed.

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Answer 3

@Anonymous & @Xiaowei He

Thank you for giving your time and replying for my question.

Best Regards
NndnG