How to run Hyper V on a guest Operating System on VMware host on Windows Server 2016

Hello Everyone ,

For those of you who feel inclined  to try out nested virtualization feature in Windows Server 2016 but on a VMware host can refer to the following steps. I will discuss what issues i faced and how i fixed them.

I started the install as usual going to the server manager and selecting the Hyper V through roles and features. But guess what i ran into the following error and it happens if you have not exposed the CPU to the VM for nested hyper-visor .

Please find the error message attached when you try to install Hyper V on a Windows Server 2016 :

Now you can expose full CPU virtualization to the guest operating system so that applications that require hardware virtualization can run on virtual machines without binary translation or paravirtualization.

Prerequisites :

• Verify that the virtual machine compatibility is ESXi 5.1 and later.
• Intel Nehalem Generation (Xeon Core i7) or later processors or AMD Opteron Generation 3 (Greyhound) or later processors.
• Verify that Intel VT-x or AMD-V is enabled in the BIOS so that hardware assisted virtualization is possible .
• Required Privileges:Virtual machine.Configuration.Settings set on the vCenter Server system

Procedure :

1. Right-click the virtual machine and select Edit Settings.
   

   To locate a virtual machine, select a datacenter, folder, cluster, resource pool, host, or vApp Click the Related Objects tab and click Virtual Machines.

2. On the Virtual Hardware tab, expand CPU, and select Expose hardware-assisted virtualization to guest OS.
3. Click OK .
4. The Manage tab refreshes, and the Nested Hypervisor CPU option shows Enabled.

Try to install Hyper again and it should go through .

Hope this helps to implement Server 2016 with Nested virtualization 🙂