Hi guys,
Yesterday Microsoft started the Build conference.
They released a developer version of Windows 8 (workstation and server) last night and is available on the MSDN website for download.
If you didn’t see the keynote for Microsoft’s “build” click here.
If you want to run Windows 8 (server) in a virtual enviroment you need either Microsoft’s Hyper-V, Citrix XenServer or VMWare’s Workstation 8.
You can download your copy of VMWare’s Workstation 8 version here.
For Xitrix XenServer just click here.
And last but certainly not least Microsoft Hyper-V is available here. This is a free stand-alone version where you don’t need a license for.
There is a lot of news from the build conference and you’ll have to follow me on Twitter (@jackcobben) to keep up. I’ll be posting some info on the blog but not everything.
For now this is it and until next time.
Greetz
Jack
Have you tested Win8 on Xenserver?
Gaz,
Personally I didn’t test it. But from a reliable source I’ve received the info that with the latest version of Citrix XenServer it should work perfectly. Why the question? Having problems with XenServer and Windows 8?
Greetz
Jack
Gary,
What I’ve come to know about Windows 8 and XenServer from Ruben Spruijt is that XenServer 6 should work fine.
I can confirm that 5.6 doesn’t work with Windows 8.
I hope you have (or can download a copy) of XenServer 6.0 and try it with that.
Good luck.
Greetz
Jack
I’ve got a spare server and I’d like to put XenServer on it insead of Hyper-V. This site http://tinkertry.com/windows8download/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=windows8download has a thread running on virtualising Win8 and a guy called Noel Fairclough reckons it won’t run on XenServer 5.6 SP2. He could be wrong but I just wanted to know where you got your info from.
Gary
Thanks Jack. I’ll do that now and I’ll let you know how I get on.
Best,
Gary
I’m trying XenServer 6 beta with Windows 8 Preview now, and it doesn’t work. It gives the same error as XenServer 5.6 with SP2.
So far I’ve only seen Windows 8 Preview working on VMWare Workstation 8, and VirtualBox. And I’ve only “heard” of it working on Hyper-V (but haven’t seen this myself).
Hello,
XenServer 6 should work fine. I haven’t tested it personally but I know collegue’s who have. For Hyper-V I can tell you from my own personal experience that it works just fine. I don’t know what your configuration/setup is for your XenServer and the Windows8 vm but possibly that there’s a misconfig somewhere.
Greetz
Jack
Hi Jack – I stand corrected. It does work on XenServer 6 beta…. BUT…. there needs to be a workaround done from the console.
Here are the steps (I used Win8 x64 in my example).
1. Create a Win7 x64 Virtual Machine, and select the Win8 Preview ISO to boot from. Follow the wizard all the way to the last screen, but untick the option to start up the VM.
2. Connect to the XenServer console, and run the following command to find out the UUID of the VM that’s just been created.
xe vm-list name-label=win8vm
^where “win8vm” is the name of the VM
This will give back some info, and one of the bits of info is the UUID.
Then run this command.
xe vm-param-set uuid=xxxxxxxx-xxxx-xxxx-xxxx platform:viridian=false
^^obviously replacing the X’s with a copy & paste of the UUID from the previous step.
Now start the VM, and it works.
And just one more thing… XenTools won’t work out of the box on Windows 8. To get it working, mount the xs-tools.iso on the drive. In the Win8 VM, open Explorer, browse to the CD drive (where the ISO is mounted), then right click on the xensetup.exe file.
Go to “Troubleshoot Compatibility”. Windows 8 will then say it needs to run the file in Windows XP SP3 compatibility mode. Once Windows 8 has done it’s thing – click on the “Start the program” from the compatibility wizard that runs. Presto – Xentools on Windows 8.