Sharing physical resources is the primary purpose of virtualization. in Hyper-V we assign physical resources like; CPU, RAM, and disk space for every Virtual Machine at the time of configuration. But other resources like External disks, USB flash drives, and other plug play are configured when needed. In this article, I explain how to share host resources with the virtual machine in Hyper-V.

In Hyper-V, even if you want to copy a file from the USB flash drive to your virtual machine, you have to go a long way: You must create a virtual switch, connect your host and virtual machine to the same virtual switch, and give your virtual machine access to your USB flash drive. I will go through this process step by step in this article.

Create Virtual Switch in Hyper-V

When you create a Virtual Switch in Hyper-V, you will see three types of virtual switches. Each of these switch types has its advantages, so you have to choose the right type of Switch.

External Switch

External Switch provides a connection between virtual machines, hosts, and the physical network. It means that your virtual machine can connect to the internet as well. When you connect your virtual machine to an external switch, your virtual machine will be accessible by the host, physical network and the internet.

Internal Switch

You can use an Internal switch to separate your host network from your virtual network. Your virtual machines can communicate with each other and with the host, using an internal switch. But can not communicate with the physical network.

Private Switch

Virtual machines connected to a private switch can communicate with each other, but can not communicate with the host or physical network.

Now that you have understood virtual switch types follow the steps below to create a virtual switch.

1. Open Hyper-V Manager and click on Virtual Switch Manager.

2. Click on the New virtual network switch and select External, Internal or Private, then click on Create Virtual Switch. To share local resources with a virtual machine in Hyper-V, you must create an external switch or internal Switch because just external and internal switches provide the connection with the host. A Private Switch doesn’t provide the connection between virtual machines and the host machine.

3. Name your virtual Switch; you can see it as you type the name. Choose the Internal network connection type for your virtual Switch, then press OK.

Now that you have created a virtual switch make sure that it has been created appropriately by clicking on Virtual Switch Manager in Hyper-V Manager. You can change your switch type easily from Virtual Switch Manager. Now let’s connect the virtual machine to the virtual Switch.

Check out if you want to know how to create a virtual switch by using Windows PowerShell.

Connect Virtual Machine to Virtual Switch

Both the host and the virtual machine must be connected to the same virtual Switch in order to share your host resources with the virtual machine. When you create an external or internal switch in Hyper-V, your host connects automatically to that Switch, but your virtual machine doesn’t. You have to connect your virtual machine to the virtual switch manually. I explain how to connect the virtual machine to the virtual switch step by step.

1. Open Hyper-V Manager, right-click on the name of your virtual machine and click on Settings. Or, if your virtual machine is running, maximize your virtual machine window and click on the File and click on settings.

2. Click on Add Hardware, select Network Adapter and click on Add.

3. Select the virtual Switch from the list and click OK. You can also remove any virtual switch that is not needed by selecting that virtual Switch and clicking on Remove.

4. Before you go to share local resources in Hyper-V, make sure that your host is connected to your virtual Switch. Open Control Panel, click on Network and Internet, and then click on Network and Sharing Center.

When creating a virtual switch, make sure it is the right type of Switch that you need. If you want to connect your virtual machine to the internet, create an external switch, and if you’re going to separate your virtual network from the host network, then create a Private Switch.

Configure to Share Host’s Local Resources With Virtual Machine

You can share; printers, clipboards, external hard disks, internal disk drives, USB flash drives, and other plug and play devices from the Local Resources. In Hyper-V, if you want to copy a file into your virtual machine, it doesn’t provide you with the copy and paste option from the host to the virtual machine, so you have to share it via file-sharing or share the disk or USB itself. Follow the steps below to configure resource sharing.

1. Right-click on the Virtual Machine name and click on Connect. The following screen appears, then click on Show Options.

2. Click on Local resources to see local devices, check the devices you want to share with the virtual machine, and then click on Connect. If the resource you want to share is not in the list, click on More.

3. The following screen appears, select your resource from that list and click OK. I want to share Local drive C and a USB Pendrive which is plugged into my computer.

4. After your virtual machine is connected, log in with a username and password. Check the File Explorer, drive and devices you shared before will appear under Redirected drives and folders.

Sharing local resources look complicated, but it gets easier when you understand the process well. If you create the correct type of switch, connect your host and virtual machine to the virtual switch properly, so you will not find issues to share local resources with the virtual machine in Hyper-V.

Check out this article to know more about the installation of Hyper-V on Windows 11 and Windows Server 2022.

Check out this article if you want to know How To Connect Hyper-V Machines To Internet?

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A simple note to delete vSAN datastore from ESXi host while it’s not parts of the cluster. The error “Found host(s) esxi.mydomain.lab participating in the vSAN service which is not a member of this host’s vCenter cluster“, indicates that the host is still a member of vCenter cluster.

The issue comes out when I was playing with vSAN configuration on vShpere 7. I’ve deleted the cluster without removing the cluster hosts properly.

Delete vSAN Datastore in ESXi Host

It’s not possible to delete a vSAN datastore from Datastore section of ESXi host. I’ve tried but the Delete button was false.

But we can remove the ESXi host from vSAN cluster then the vSAN datastore will be removed automatically.

Let’s delete vSAN Datastore using the following steps.

Enable SSH on ESXi host where you deploy VCSA

1. Log in ESXi host suing IP address and root and password.
2. Click Manage on Navigator part.
3. Select the Services tab.
4. Select TSM-SSH service from the list.
5. Push Start button on top.

Make sure the SSH is enabled and you are able to connect to ESXi host via SSH.

Related Article: How To Fix No Healthy Upstream VCenter 7 Issue?

You can enable ESXi SSH through vCenter as well.

Connect with root user to ESXi host using PuTTy, command prompt, Terminal, PowerShell, Chrome SSH or whatever you have.

 ssh root@192.168.20.101

Now, type the following command to check out the vSAN Datastore.

esxcli vsan storage list

If you have any storage linked to vSAN, delete it with the following command. Make sure you select the right UUID of the vSAN Datastore.

esxcli vsan storage remove -u "UUID"

The command will list all the vSAN mounted storage on ESXi host. If you don’t have any mounted datastore like my lab, just type the following command to remove the host from vSAN cluster.

esxcli vsan cluster leave

The task has been completed. Now you should have a healthy ESXi host with any notifications or the “Found host(s) esxi.mydomain.lab participating in the vSAN service which is not a member of this host’s vCenter cluster” error.

I hope this has been informative and solved the issue you have with your VMWare vSphere Lab. If you want more about vSAN Datastore and Disk group.

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You can enable Hyper-V to create virtual machines on Windows 10 without downloading any extra Hyper-v software. Hyper-V can be enabled in many ways including using the Windows 10 control panel, PowerShell (my favourite) or using the Deployment Imaging Servicing and Management tool (DISM). But here you can free download Hyper-v Server 2016 iso file for installing Hyper-v server directly on a physical server and creating a network and server virtualization environment.

Related Article: Enable and Configure Hyper-v in Windows 10

Differences between Hyper-V on Windows and Hyper-V on Windows Server

There are some features that work differently in Hyper-V on Windows than they do in Hyper-V running on Windows Server.

Hyper-V features only available on Windows Server:

• Virtualizing GPUs using RemoteFX
• Live migration of virtual machines from one host to another
• Hyper-V Replica
• Virtual Fiber Channel
• SR-IOV networking
• Shared.VHDX

Hyper-V features only available on Windows 10:

• Quick Create and the VM Gallery
• Default network (NAT switch)

The memory management model is different for Hyper-V on Windows. On a server, Hyper-V memory is managed with the assumption that only the virtual machines are running on the server. In Hyper-V on Windows, memory is managed with the expectation that most client machines are running software on host in addition to running virtual machines.

Limitations

Programs that depend on specific hardware will not work well in a virtual machine. For example, games or applications that require processing with GPUs might not work well. Also, applications relying on sub-10ms timers such as live music mixing applications or high precision times could have issues running in a virtual machine.

In addition, if you have Hyper-V enabled, those latency-sensitive, high-precision applications may also have issues running in the host. This is because with virtualization enabled, the host OS also runs on top of the Hyper-V virtualization layer, just as guest operating systems do. However, unlike guests, the host OS is special in that it has direct access to all the hardware, which means that applications with special hardware requirements can still run without issues in the host OS.

Free Download Hyper-v Server 2016 ISO File

Microsoft Hyper-V Server is a free product that delivers enterprise-class virtualization for your datacenter and hybrid cloud. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2016 provides new and enhanced features that can help you deliver the scale and performance needs of your mission-critical workloads.

Microsoft Hyper-V, codenamed Viridian and formerly known as Windows Server Virtualization, is a native hypervisor; it can create virtual machines on x86-64 systems running Windows. Starting with Windows 8, Hyper-V superseded Windows Virtual PC as the hardware virtualization component of the client editions of Windows NT. A server computer running Hyper-V can be configured to expose individual virtual machines to one or more networks.

Hyper-V was first released alongside Windows Server 2008, and has been available without additional charge for all the Windows Server and Windows 8 and later. A standalone Windows Hyper-V Server is free, but with a command line interface only.

The Windows hypervisor technology in Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2016 is the same as what’s in the Microsoft Hyper-V role on Windows Server 2016. It is a stand-alone product that contains only the Windows hypervisor, a Windows Server driver model, and virtualization components. It provides a simple and reliable virtualization solution to help you improve your server utilization and reduce costs.

Editions: Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2016 | 64-bit ISO

For more to learn virtualization technology, read the virtualization section articels and check the online Windows Serve virtual lab.

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