Prerequisites for Hyper-V Manager. Hyper-V Manager must be run from within a fully licensed copy of Windows, but is otherwise free of charge. It is available for the Professional and Enterprise editions of desktop Windows, but it must be downloaded. Hyper-V Manager. Download Hyper-V Configuration Tool (7.2 MB) To receive further details regarding HyperV Configuration Tool, contact. We value your privacy, and will neither abuse the information you provide nor give it to third parties.

• Hyper-v software, free download

• Help Desk Server

Find the Hyper-v than click and tick on it then click on the plus + icon than select Hyper-v management tools click on the plus + icon and select Hyper-v services also and now click ok. Now restart your laptop or PC. Now open your Start Menu search Hyper V Manager you can see the Hyper V Manager here just click on it. Click “Start” and click on “Administrator Tools”, then click on the Hyper-V Manager icon. Next, connect to your local Hyper-V. In the next image, we can see the Hyper-V Manager with some of the options. Hyper-V Settings, where it is possible to change the settings for the Hyper-V (the ones used when we were installing Hyper-V Role).

Watch the video above for a brief intro, or take a look at the step by step instructions below to learn how to setup Help Desk Server in your own Hyper-V environment.

Just get the download

Skip to the chase - you just want the VHD download URL. You already know what to do with it.

Host Options

You have multiple options to choose from, so we’ve broken them down for you, here. For your virtual machine host:

With any of the above platforms as your virtual machine host, you can either:

• download our pre-installed VHD file, which has HDS already installed into a vanilla Ubuntu Server (recommended)
• download and install Ubuntu Server into an empty virtual machine, then download and install HDS

Windows 10

Overview

To setup Help Desk Server as a Hyper-V virtual machine running on Windows 10, first you’ll setup Windows 10 to allow you to administer Hyper-V using Hyper-V Manager. Then setup an external virtual switch in Hyper-V, and either download and use our pre-installed VHD file, or create an Ubuntu Server VM and install HDS. Details below.

Initial setup

• Install/enable the Hyper-V role in Windows: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/virtualization/hyper-v-on-windows/quick-start/enable-hyper-v

• Setup an external switch in Hyper-V. Use the Hyper-V Manager UI, or Powershell:

  New-VMSwitch -name ExternalSwitch -NetAdapterName Ethernet -AllowManagementOS $true

Choose an installation type

Now you have two options, download and use the VHD in a new empty Hyper-V virtual machine, or install Ubuntu yourself and then install Help Desk Server.

Use the pre-installed VHD file (option 1)

• Download the Help Desk Server .vhd file from Spiceworks. Use a browser, or Powershell::

  Invoke-WebRequest 'https://community.spiceworks.com/r/4350' -OutFile 'HDS-server.iso'

• Create a new VM using the downloaded VHD file. Use the Hyper-V Manager UI, or Powershell:

  New-VM -Name “<name-of-HDS-VHD>” -MemoryStartupBytes 4GB -VHDPath “.<vhd file path>” -BootDevice VHD -Generation 1 -SwitchName “ExternalSwitch”

• Start the new VM. Use the Hyper-V Manager UI, or Powershell:

  Start-VM <name-of-HDS-VHD>

In the Hyper-V Manager UI select the newly created virtual machine and click Connect.

Install into an empty Ubuntu Server virtual machine (option 2)

• Install HDS into a new Ubuntu Server virtual machine - you can loosely follow the same steps we provide as a convenience on this page, under Install Ubuntu.

Hyper-V Server 2019

Setup an installation of Hyper-V Server 2019 (free) and install Windows Admin Center (also free) to administer Hyper-V Server from a browser.

Install Hyper-V Server 2019 on your hardware

Initial setup outside the scope of this document:

• get to a command prompt/Powershell prompt in Hyper-V Server
• setup the server’s local network settings (DHCP/static IP? etc.)
• enable Remote Desktop on Hyper-V Server

(optional) RDP to your new Hyper-V server

If you enabled Remote Desktop from Hyper-V server’s sconfig prompt, you can now RDP to your new Hyper-V server from your workstation (or go back and enable RDP now).

Create a Hyper-V “external vswitch”

Creating the external virtual switch allows VMs to access the local network.

Note: You’ll briefly lose network connectivity with Hyper-V Server, but it should come back up in ~30 sec..

Download and install “Windows Admin Center” (WAC)

WAC provides a slick GUI to administer Hyper-V Server via a browser-based/web admin console.

The below commands will download the WAC .msi installer and launch the installer GUI:

Choose your install option

As mentioned above, choose whether to install HDS from a VHD, or by installing Ubuntu Server and then installing HDS.

(Option 1) Set up pre-installed Help Desk Server VHD

Download the Help Desk Server VHD

Download the Help Desk Server .vhd file from Spiceworks:

Create the HDS VM

From the Virtual Machines menu in WAC, create a new virtual machine with these specs:

• Gen 1 VM
• 4 vCPU
• 4+GB RAM (min.4, recommended is 8+GB)
• 30+GB storage, select the downloaded VHD as “existing virtual hard disk”

or use Powershell:

Start the new VM

Now skip to Launch HDS.

(Option 2) Install Ubuntu Server, and then install HDS

Download the Ubuntu .iso onto the Hyper-V server

Download the latest Ubuntu Server 18 LTS .iso from Ubuntu. We’ll use the .iso to install Ubuntu Server on your new virtual machine - the .iso will be used later as the boot media for the new VM.

For example, this Powershell command would download Ubuntu Server 18.04.5 (this may not be the latest version, which we recommend):

Access WAC

From another device on the same network, use Chrome browser to access WAC via https://hyperVhost.

Create the Ubuntu Server VM

From the Virtual Machines menu in WAC, create a new virtual machine with these specs:

• Gen 1 VM
• 4 vCPU
• 4+GB RAM (min.4, recommended is 8+GB)
• 30+GB storage
• Set the downloaded Ubuntu .iso as the boot media

Start the new VM

Install Ubuntu Server

This is mostly outside the scope of this document, but in your new VM, you can typically use the default installation options, optionally enabling OpenSSH ifprompted (if you want to later remote SSH to your Ubuntu server to administer HDS).

Install HDS into your new Ubuntu VM

Great, now you’ve got a new Ubuntu Server virtual machine set up - we just need to install Help Desk Server. Use these instructions:

Go to Launch HDS.

Launch HDS

You’re all set - the VM is setup, and HDS is installed. Just run the below command to launch HDS:

Access HDS from a browser

You’re finished with the server environment setup - HDS is now accessible from a browser. The VM console will output your HDS URL, typically https://192.168.x.y (depending on the VM’s IP address).

I am beginning an overview of self-hosted/on-prem virtualization hub options on my blog with Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2019.

Hyper-V Server 2019 is a lightweight version of Windows 10 Server 2019 that is optimized to act only as a Hyper-V host.

If you are familiar with Windows 10 Server, think of Hyper-V Server as Windows 10 Server with just the Hyper-V Role and a very minimal TUI.

Hyper-V supports Windows 7, 8.1, 10, as well as a variety of Linux and BSD guests.

What is nifty about Hyper-V Server is that it is free from Microsoft. Microsoft provides an unlimited evaluation period to use it.

Note though, you will need proper licenses for Windows versions running on top of Hyper-V Server.

You can download Hyper-V Server 2019 for free directly from Microsoft:

You simply need to complete some work information:

Select your language:

And download your ISO:

Which is about 2.9 GB:

You can burn your Hyper-V Server ISO to a DVD or to a USB with Rufus. You could even run Hyper-V Server inside another type 1 hypervisor such as Hyper-V or KVM that supports nested virtualization extensions.

The initial install process for Hyper-V Server looks remarkably like Windows 10. Select your language and a new install:

Agree to the EULA:

Select 'Custom' install unless you are upgrading:

Create new and format virtual disks, as needed:

Windows will create some system and reserved partitions:

Profit:

The first run of Hyper-V Server looks a bit sparse. Get used to it. Hyper-V Server is all managed on the device in a terminal user interface (TUI). It is also extremely fast.

Create a new password for Administrator:

Then we get to the main show: A Command Prompt and our Hyper-V Server Configuration script. That's all we need to get started.

The first thing I do is enable Automatic Updates for security purposes with option 5:

I also enable Telemetry so Microsoft can see, anonymously, what I am doing with Hyper-V Server with option 10:

Then I manually run updates with option 6, which will end with needing to restart:

Restart as needed:

Log back into our freshly updated system:

You can enable Remote Desktop to Hyper-V Server, allowing the server to act as a headless VM server, with option 7:

After enabling, you can try Remote Desktop by getting the Hyper-V Server's IP address with option 8:

Then connect from another device with the Remote Desktop client built into Windows:

And we see:

If you are running Hyper-V Server inside Hyper-V (and not on bare metal) then you will need to shutdown your VM, go to your Virtual Switch Manager on your host, add an External Switch, which is reachable from outside your localhost, and then add it to your Hyper-V Server VM:

You can then access Remote Desktop from other devices on the network, using the External Switch IP:

It is also possible to forward the Remote Desktop connection without using an external switch, but this quick and dirty for our lab testing.

If you are running Hyper-V Server on Hyper-V and run into issues starting new VMs you may need to shut down and enable nested virtualization for that VM:

Note: Hyper-V nested virtualization works well on Intel chips. On AMD chips you will need Windows 10 build 19636 or higher and currently nested KVM acceleration is not supported.

You can also access your Hyper-V Server with an RDP client like Remmina:

You really get the most from your headless Hyper-V Server by connecting it to Hyper-V Manager from another Windows 10 client or using PowerShell.

Hyper-V Manager requires Windows 10 Pro, Enterprise, or Education. If you can't find Hyper-V Manager by searching the Start Menu, you may need to enable it in Windows Features:

Or in PowerShell as Administrator:

Once installed, we can use Hyper-V Manager on our client locally or to connect to Hyper-V Server and create and manage VMs there.

The idea of using a client and server is that you could use Hyper-V Manager on a power-efficient portable client device while running Hyper-V Server and mulitple OS workloads on your stationary workstation or bare metal server.

The next few steps are can be skipped if you have Active Directory on a Domain with Hyper-V Administrator permissions set. This is common in enterprise environments to lock everything down and make it more secure.

For our testing purposes today, we do not though. We are connecting from an arbitrary client to an arbitrary Hyper-V Server, so we need to do a couple extra steps before we can connect.

On our Windows 10 client we need to configure WinRM. Open PowerShell as Administrator and run:

Do not be alarmed by the error. It is okay the WinRM firewall exception will not work here because we will not be remotely managing our client, we just need WinRM to be enabled and running on our client to handle the credential negotiation with our Hyper-V Server.

Next, we need to add the IP address of our Hyper-V Server to our WinRM client Trusted Hosts list:

Finally, we need to store the Administrator and password credentials for our Hyper-V Server (substituting the IP address or server name, as needed):

Back in Hyper-V, to connect to a Hyper-V Server, click 'Connect to Server':

Type the IP address of our Hyper-V Server:

And we are now connected!

In Hyper-V Manager we now see a connection to our Hyper-V Server at 172.19.159.43:

In my case, where I am running Hyper-V Server on Hyper-V, we also see a Hyper-V session running locally at T730, which is running our Hyper-V Server image:

So now what?

We have:

• Hyper-V Server 2019 installed and configured
• Updates applied
• Automatic updates enabled
• Telemetry on
• Remote Desktop access from Windows and Linux
• In my case, possibly yours, doing it all from inside Hyper-V...because we can

Why don't we install some Virtual Machines?

Such as, Windows 8.1?

Grab an ISO from Microsoft.

Stash it on easily accessible NAS location. Why? It needs to be accessible from your Hyper-V Server. If you need to, you can share your Downloads folder out on the network using Windows File Sharing, just don't forget you did later.

Create a new VM just like you would if it were local, setting the bootable image file to the ISO on your NAS/network share:

Same goes for Linux ISOs.

Install just like your regular VM and voila:

Hyper-V Server 2019 makes for a fast remote/headless virtual machine hub for mixed Windows and Linux environments.

Experienced Windows administrators should feel comfortable using Hyper-V Server 2019 deploying Linux servers alongside their existing Windows infrastructure.

The speed with which Hyper-V Server can run Windows workloads is impressive.

As Windows administrators become more comfortable with Linux and reduce reliance on legacy Windows workloads, it may make sense for some administrators to transition from Hyper-V Server to a Linux-first KVM-based solution.

That will be the topic of my next post.

By the way, this is what running Windows 8.1 and Ubuntu 21.04 on Hyper-V Server 2019 on Windows 10 Pro looks like performance-wise:

At rest, it barely sips any RAM or CPU:

Hyper-v software, free download

A note on networking: Nested virtualization networking can be tricky, particularly when running Hyper-V Server on Hyper-V. That configuration is outside the scope of this article, perhaps in a follow-up post. In real world production your Hyper-V Server would likely have a dedicated physical NIC bound for each VM.