Is Hyper-V Server 2008 working on Intel’s Atom platform

central-processing-unithyper-vhyper-v-server-2008-r2

Did anybody try to install Hyper-V on Intel Atom platform?

Hyper-V requires:

  • x64 compatible processor with Intel VT or AMD-V technology enabled
  • Hardware Data Execution Prevention (DEP)

It seems that both requirements are satisfied with Atom as processor. However, I wonder whether there is some blocking issue (e.g. BIOS that does not support it) since all Atom motherboards I checked had quite old north/south-bridge.

My intentions are to run two low-requirements virtual machines (embedded Linux), so performance should not be an issue.

Best Answer

Plenty of people have tried VMWare ESXi on Atom, and have come to the conclusion that it works if you get the right motherboard, but performance is absolutely awful.

I can't see this being different for Hyper-V. You're going to be able to buy a cheap AMD Opteron system with virtualization built-in and fully supported by Hyper-V for as little as an Atom system is going to cost you, I'd recommend going down that route.

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