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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To restore to the previous configuration, you have to create virtual machine checkpoints in Hyper-V. You often make some changes to your virtual machine, but that change doesn’t go well, and you want to restore it to the previous configuration.

Checkpoint Types

We have two types of checkpoints in Hyper-V: standard checkpoints and production checkpoints. The production checkpoint is more stable than the standard checkpoint.

Standard Checkpoints: capture the virtual machine and everything running in virtual machine memory. Formerly it was known as snapshots before windows 10.

Production Checkpoint: saves the virtual machine state but does not save the information about the running application.

Configure Checkpoints in Hyper-V

Follow the steps below to create virtual machine checkpoints in Hyper-V

1. Right-click on the virtual machine name and click on Checkpoint, or select your virtual machine and click on Checkpoint at the right column in Hyper-V Manager. When you click on Checkpoint by default, it creates a standard checkpoint, but you can configure it to create a production checkpoint.

To configure checkpoint settings, open Hyper-V Manager, click on Action, then settings. The screen below appears. Click on Checkpoints in the left menu, check Enable checkpoints and click on Production checkpoints.

Once your checkpoint is created, select your checkpoint and click on Apply.

This screen appears. I suggest clicking on Create Checkpoint and Apply because it creates a checkpoint on the current state of your virtual machines and then applies the previous checkpoint.

A checkpoint is a valuable tool in Hyper-V. It helps try the different applications, settings, and configurations without damaging your machine.

To know more about checkpoints, click here.

You may also like How to connect the virtual machine to the internet?

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You can run your workloads on Hyper-V, then easily migrate them from on-premises to a Windows Server virtual machine in the cloud. Deploy applications on multiple operating systems with best-in-class support for Linux on Hyper-V. So, you have a great option in Windows 10 make a virtualization lab for practising virtualization. Are you ready to enable and configure Hyper-V on your Windows 10 for practising in a virtualized environment?

What is Hyper-V in Windows 10?

The Microsoft Hyper-V, 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.

Microsoft Hyper-V was first released alongside Windows Server 2008 and has been available without charge for all the Windows Server and some client operating systems since. Now you can use Hyper-V on Windows 10 that make client operating systems and server virtualization easy. Fortunately, the latest version of Hyper-V on Windows 10 support Linux operating systems as well. Now you can create an open network environment with Windows and Linux.

Enable and Configure Hyper-V

Hyper-v is not a downloadable and installable virtualization software like VMware or VirtualBox. It is a Windows 10 built-in feature that can be easily enabled and disabled.

Hyper-V System Requirements on Windows 10: 

• Windows 10 Enterprise, Professional, or Education
• 64-bit Processor with Second Level Address Translation (SLAT).
• CPU support for VM Monitor Mode Extension (VT-c on Intel CPU’s).
• Minimum of 4 GB memory.

The Hyper-V role cannot be installed on Windows 10 Home. You must upgrade from Windows 10 Home edition to Windows 10 Professional for creating a Hyper-v virtualized environment. For more information and troubleshooting, see Windows 10 Hyper-V System Requirements.

To install Hyper-V on Windows 10:

1. Open Windows Features.
2. Enable Hyper-V option.
3. Restart your computer.

1. Press Windows+R keys on the keyboard to open Windows Run. And type “optionalfeatures” and press enter to open Windows Features. Then select Hyper-V from Windows features and click OK to enable Hyper-v on Windows 10.

After enabling Hyper-v on Windows 10, it prompts to restart your computer for applying the Windows changes. Just save your works and click Restart now to restart your PC.

That was using GUI for installing and configuring Hyper-V on Windows 10. But Hyper-V has some PowerShell commands as well. Let’s test how to enable Hyper-V using PowerShell on Windows 10 and Windows Server?

Enable Hyper-V Using PowerShell:

Open a PowerShell console as Administrator and run the following command:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName:Microsoft-Hyper-V -All

No matter, you have installed Hyper-V using PowerShell command or GUI, you must restart your computer for applying changes.

Enable Hyper-V with DISM command in Command Prompt

This is another command-line option to enable Hyper-V on Windows 10. The Deployment Image Servicing and Management tool (DISM) helps configure Windows and Windows images. Among its many applications, DISM can enable Windows features while the operating system is running.

To enable the Hyper-V role using DISM:

1. Open up a PowerShell or CMD session as Administrator.
2. Type the following command.

DISM /Online /Enable-Feature /All /FeatureName:Microsoft-Hyper-V

OK.

When you restart your computer, just press type “Hyper-v” on Windows search to find the Hyper-V virtualization software. Yes, check the below screenshot shows the Hyper-V on my computer.

That’s good, your Hyper-v has been enabled and it is ready for server virtualization on Windows 10. The next step is configuring Hyper-v on Windows 10 for server virtualization or practising for the cloud computing network.

Essential Hyper-V Configuration on Windows 10

The below article focuses to configure Hyper-V essential setting for creating a virtualized environment on Windows 10.

• The essential Hyper-V Configuration for Server virtualization on Windows 10.

Good luck.

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Linux desktop and server virtualization configuration on VMware is a hot topic of networking and cloud computing. You have installed a Linux on your virtualized lab but not work perfectly. After installing Linux on a VMware, you need to install VMware tools correctly to integrate virtual machine with the host system. VMware tools are a suite of utilities that enhance the performance of the virtual machines guest operating system and improves the management of the virtual machine. Without VMware Tools installed in your guest operating system, guest performance lacks important functionality.

Installing VMware Tools eliminates or improves these issues:

• Low video resolution.
• Inadequate colour depth.
• Incorrect display of network speed.
• Restricted movement of the mouse.
• Inability to copy and paste and drag-and-drop files.
• Missing sound.
• Provides the ability to take quiesced snapshots of the guest OS.
• Synchronizes the time in the guest operating system with the time on the host.

VMware Tools includes these components:

• The VMware Tools service.
• VMware device drivers.
• The VMware user process.
• VMware Tools control panel.

Read more about VMware Tools features and functionalities on overview of VMware tools.

Install VMware Tools Correctly on Ubuntu Linux

The steps to install VMware Tools vary depending on the VMware product and the guest operating system you have installed. In this post, we are going to install VMware tools correctly on Linux Ubuntu using VMware workstation. The host system is a Windows 10.

1. Right-click the Ubuntu virtual machine on VMware workstation then click Install VMware Tools to mount the VMware tools to DVD Rom.

2. Open the DVD on the Ubuntu sidebar and copy the VMware-tools-distrib from inside the VMwareTools***tar.gz compressed file to the desktop.

3. Now, run the terminal command line and navigate to VMware folder on the desktop. Type “cd Desktop” to go to the desktop directory, then type “ls” to see what you have on your desktop. Navigate to VMware tools folder with “cd” (change directory) command.

4. Finally, type the “sudo ./vmware-install.pl -d” command to start VMware tools installation. When the installation has been finished, once restart your system to apply the changes.

5. Check the final reports whether the installation finished successfully or not. If you experience issues when installing VMware Tools, comment us for troubleshooting help.

Additional Information:

The VMware Tools are normally bundled with VMware products as well as security updates when applicable. As of VMware Tools version, customers also have the option to download from My VMware. Two different downloadable archives are presented, one for recent guest Operating System releases and another that covers older, legacy guest operating system versions. VMware Tools are typically forward and backward compatible with several product releases. For more information, see VMware Compatibility Guide.

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The Linux Ubuntu Desktop comes with everything you need to run as client desktop. Install Ubuntu desktop in your organisation, school, home or enterprise network. All the essential applications, like an office suite, browsers, email and media apps come pre-installed, and thousands more games and applications are available in the Ubuntu software centre.

We are going to install Ubuntu desktop on Hyper-v using Windows 10. It is the best practice to test or using multiple operating systems on a computer. You need to Download Ubuntu Desktop image from Ubuntu website.

Before you Begin:

Before you start to install Ubuntu desktop on Hyper-v, you should know the basic knowledge of Hyper-v. If you are new with Hyper-v, read the following articles.

• Hyper-v Beginner: A Practical Guide to Virtualization: Introduction and Installation of Hyper-v
• Essential Hyper-V Configuration: Creating Virtual Machine and Hyper-v network configuration.
• How to Connect Hyper-v Machines to Internet?

Install Ubuntu Desktop on Hyper-v

Before installing Ubuntu, Install Hyper-v feature on your Windows 10 or Windows Server. Then create a new virtual machine in Hyper-v and start the installation of Ubuntu desktop on Hyper-v virtual machine.

1. From the Hyper-v Manager console run the Ubuntu Linux virtual machine and click the Start to run the virtual machine.

2. On the welcome page select your language and click Install Ubuntu button. The chosen language is going to be your default operating system language. So try to choose the correct language.

3. Click Continue on the preparing to install Ubuntu desktop. Don’t pick the Install this third-party software if they are not required.

4. Select Erase disk and install Ubuntu and click Install Now to begin the installation.

Note: this option will remove the entire disk and create a new partition in order to install the operating system. So be careful when you want to install a dual-boot Windows and Ubuntu Linux installation.

If you need to create more partitions, then choose something else and continue to create more partitions.

5. When you click the Install now button, it prompts that do you write the changes to disk? Click Continue to accept and apply the partition changes.

6. When ask you where are you? Just select your location and click Continue.

7. Choose the language and keyboard layout and click Continue. This language will be the standard language for the keyboard. You can change the keyboard language later also.

8. To create a user account, type your name, computer name, username and password then click Continue to begin the installation.

9. Do nothing, let the Ubuntu installation process will finish successfully. When the installation has completed, then click Restart Now to restart the virtual machine.

10. Now on the login page type the password and login to Ubuntu desktop virtual machine.

Finally, welcome to the Linux Ubuntu desktop as Hyper-v virtual machine in Windows 10.

OK, that’s all about installing Linux Ubuntu Desktop on Hyper-v in Windows 10. If you have any question or suggestion about website, articles, services, please comment us.

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Let’s Create a virtual Machine in VMWare. In the previews article we talk about choosing a software for Virtualization and training lab. You can read the article form “Set Up A Penetration Testing Lab for Hackers“.  But know we must configure our lab, installing software and Operating system. Before all we need to create a virtual machine.

A virtual machine is the real simulated machine which let us install an operating system, like Linux, Windows or Mac OS. Later we can connect virtual machines with each other, in order to create a Local Area Network (LAN). For those who are familiar with such an environment, configuring and manipulating of these software are easy, but for newbies it is a bit difficult.

Create A Virtual Machine in VMWare

I assume that you have download and installed VMWare on your computer successfully and ready for first step creating a new virtual machine. Open the VMWare and click Create a New Virtual Machine.

If the home page is not opened, click Go to Home Tab from Tabs menu.

Now on the New Virtual Machine Wizard page select typical (recommended) and click Next.  The typical will automatically  configure some prerequisite settings of a virtual machine.

On the Guest Operating System Installation page, click Browse and select the image’s of Operating system you need to install it. Here I have chosen Windows 10 for testing. I’m not going to install it, but if you want to learn the installation of Windows OS, read the article “Install Windows Server 2012 R2 Step by Step“. This is Windows Server 2012 R2, but the installation process is the same as Windows client.

So name the new virtual machine and select the location where you want to store the vhd and configuration files of the machine. It is important to create a new folder for each new virtual machine and keep it away from host system drive. Don? so click Next.

Now specify the disk capacity. By default 60 GB is selected for new machine, but you can decrees or increase it. 60 GB is recommended for Windows 10 x65 bit, for a Linux OS 10 to 20 GB is pretty enough and no need more if you don’t keep files. Don?    So Select Store virtual disk as single file and click Next.

Finally click Finish, the system will create then going to power on the machine. The new created machine will start the OS installation if the Power on this virtual machine after creation has been checked. So I don’t want to install it now.

The creating disk might take time while you are creating a new machine.

You see the new machine Windows 10 x64 on my Virtual lab. That’s it, click Power one this virtual machine to start your new machine and install OS.

You must create a few more machine in order to completely create a virtual machine. Each machine need space and RAM. To edit a machine settings, click Edit virtual machine settings or right click virtual machine and select Settings.

You can specify more RAM, Hard disk, Network card, and even processor.  You may need to install Kali Linux on VMware “How to Install Kali Linux on VMWare?” article.

Hop you can create your lab and new virtual machine at your home with out any problems. If it issue any problems, ask through comments and we would like to help you soon.

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