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I am trying to perform Microsoft Platform testing for a vendor application. The problem I have is that it requires the test be done on Windows Server 2008 as a VM on Hyper-V R2. Currently, I have access to a virtual server with just Hyper-V and also have access to an ESXi server.

The crazy idea is to install Hyper-V R2 as a VM onto one of these other servers. Then create a VM for Windows Server 2008 on this Hyper-V R2 VM. I can not just upgrade the current Hyper-V server as the VMs currently running would need to be taken off-line and are system critical (and I don't have rights to perform this upgrade).

Has anyone tried this? Will this even work?

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No, this will not work. You cannot run a VM host as a guest VM. I'd post a more lengthy answer, but the nutshell answer is definitely not.

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That's all I was wondering. I just didn't want to waste my time trying if it wasn't a viable solution. One day I'll get into the nitty-gritty of how VMs work and probably realize how silly this question is. Thanks! – Tim Mar 18 '10 at 17:47
It is mostly a hardware issue. The Hyper-Visor runs in a priviledged mode and blocks access of the virtual clients to this - so once you run in a hyper-visor, you can not start another one. – TomTom Mar 18 '10 at 18:33
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Well technically this is true, you cannot run a Bare metal HyperVisor as a guest of a bare metal hypervisor. Interestingly you can though run Virtual Server on a guest server of Hyper-V. Don't try it, performance was awful, but I had to try it. Actually I virtualized a server, that was hosting a specialized XP guest, just had to try and bring it up.

Funny note, some 25 years ago a friend who was a VM (IBMs VM) system tech actually tried this, he got 12 to 16 levels deep before the performance became unbearable.

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