Supported Oracle Linux virtual machines on Hyper-V

Applies To: Hyper-V Server 2012, Windows 8.1, Windows Server 2012 R2, Microsoft Hyper-V Server Technical Preview, Windows Server 2012, Hyper-V Server 2012 R2, Windows 10 Technical Preview, Windows Server Technical Preview, Windows 8

The following feature distribution map indicates the features that are present in each version. The known issues and workarounds for each distribution are listed after the table.

Table legend

• Built in – LIS are included as part of this Linux distribution. The kernel module version numbers for the built in LIS (as shown by lsmod, for example) are different from the version number on the Microsoft-provided LIS download package. A mismatch does not indicate that the built in LIS is out of date.

• √ - Feature available

• (blank) - Feature not available

• UEK Rx QUy - Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel (UEK) where x is the release number and y is the quarterly update.

In this section:

• Red Hat Compatible Kernel Series

• Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Series

• Notes

Red Hat Compatible Kernel Series

The 32-bit kernel for the 6.x series is PAE enabled. There is no built-in LIS support for Oracle Linux RHCK 6.0-6.3. Oracle Linux 7.x kernels are 64-bit only.

Unbreakable Enterprise Kernel Series

The Oracle Linux Unbreakable Enterprise Kenel (UEK) is 64-bit only and has LIS support built-in.

Notes

1. For this Oracle Linux release, VLAN tagging works but VLAN trunking does not.

2. While using virtual fibre channel devices, ensure that logical unit number 0 (LUN 0) has been populated. If LUN 0 has not been populated, a Linux virtual machine might not be able to mount fibre channel devices natively.

3. If there are open file handles during a live virtual machine backup operation, then in some corner cases, the backed-up VHDs might have to undergo a file system consistency check (fsck) on restore.

4. Live backup operations can fail silently if the virtual machine has an attached iSCSI device or direct-attached storage (also known as a pass-through disk).

5. Live backup support for Oracle Linux 6.4/6.5/UEKR3 QU2 and QU3 is available through Hyper-V Backup Essentials for Linux.

6. Dynamic memory support is only available on 64-bit virtual machines.

7. Hot-Add support is not enabled by default in this distribution. To enable Hot-Add support you need to add a udev rule under /etc/udev/rules.d/ as follows:

   1. Create a file /etc/udev/rules.d/100-balloon.rules. You may use any other desired name for the file.

   2. Add the following content to the file: SUBSYSTEM=="memory", ACTION=="add", ATTR{state}="online"

   3. Reboot the system to enable Hot-Add support.

8. Dynamic memory operations can fail if the guest operating system is running too low on memory. The following are some best practices:

   • Startup memory and minimal memory should be equal to or greater than the amount of memory that the distribution vendor recommends.

   • Applications that tend to consume the entire available memory on a system are limited to consuming up to 80 percent of available RAM.

9. If you are using Dynamic Memory on a Windows Server 2012 operating system, specify Startup memory, Minimum memory, and Maximum memory parameters in multiples of 128 megabytes (MB). Failure to do so can lead to hot-add failures, and you may not see any memory increase in a guest operating system.

10. Certain distributions, including those using LIS 3.5 or LIS 4.0, only provide Ballooning support and do not provide Hot-Add support. In such a scenario, the dynamic memory feature can be used by setting the Startup memory parameter to a value which is equal to the Maximum memory parameter. This results in all the requisite memory being Hot-Added to the virtual machine at boot time and then later depending upon the memory requirements of the host, Hyper-V can freely allocate or deallocate memory from the guest using Ballooning. Please ensure that Startup Memory and Minimum Memory are not set below the recommended value for the distribution.

11. Oracle Linux Hyper-V daemons are not installed by default. To use these daemons, install the hyperv-daemons package. This package conflicts with downloaded Linux Integration Services and should not be installed on systems with downloaded LIS.

12. In Windows Server 2012 R2, the key/value pair (KVP) infrastructure might not function correctly without a Linux software update. Contact your distribution vendor to obtain the software update in case you see problems with this feature.

13. Generation 2 virtual machines have secure boot enabled by default and some Linux virtual machines will not boot unless the secure boot option is disabled. You can disable secure boot in the Firmware section of the settings for the virtual machine in Hyper-V Manager or you can disable it using Powershell:

    Set-VMFirmware –VMName "VMname" -EnableSecureBoot Off
    

See Also

• Set-VMFirmware

• Supported CentOS and Red Hat Enterprise Linux virtual machines on Hyper-V

• Supported Debian virtual machines on Hyper-V

• Supported SUSE virtual machines on Hyper-V

• Supported Ubuntu virtual machines on Hyper-V

• Supported FreeBSD virtual machines on Hyper-V

• Feature Descriptions for Linux and FreeBSD virtual machines on Hyper-V