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I have read that VMM 2012 requires Windows Server 2012 to run on. I am trying to determine if it is possible to run VMM 2012 on a virtual machine with Windows Server 2012, that is actually hosted on a physical machine running Windows Server 2008 R2. My gut says no, but my brain doesn't know why not.

Has anyone tried this, or know the reason it will or will not work?

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It is possible to run a Server 2012 guest on Hyper-V 2008 R2, and you may run into an error message saying it's unsupported, but you can safely ignore it, per this Microsoft KB.

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  • Thanks for the link. More specifically though, is there an issue with running SCVMM on this instance. Since that was the only "flavor" of System Center that REQUIRED Server 2012 as its OS, I didn't know if that meant the eventual physical node OS and hypervisor (since that is where the NICs and othe physical hardware are directly addressed), or if it just meant the platform for the VMM utility itself.
    – Silky
    Mar 12, 2013 at 18:22
  • @Silky Nah, I've got VMM running on an ESXi host server, so it doesn't care about the OS underlying the hypervisor. In fact, the whole point (well, one of the points) of a hypervisor is that the guest OSes are completely unaware of whatever host OS they're running on.
    – HopelessN00b
    Mar 12, 2013 at 18:57
  • True. I guess I'm a bit confused on where the hypervisor is in this scenario. If the physical host has Windows Server 2008 R2, and installs its hypervisor between itself and the hardware, where does the VMM 2012 "install" it's hypervisor? Is VMM 2012 reliant on Server 2012's hypervisor (v3?), or simply the OS? If its just the OS, then your scenario is fine. If it's the version of the hypervisor, then my guess is the physical server OS WOULD matter. It doesn't seem to with your situation, but I'm thoroughly confused as to the hypervisor architecture when virtualizing VMM itself :(
    – Silky
    Mar 25, 2013 at 16:20
  • @Silky A hypervisor is what runs the virtual environment. In this scenario, the 2008 host runs a Hyper-V hypervisor. Any VMs, say your 2012 VM, run inside of the hypervisor. VMM is just a management console. It does not have or run a hypervisor of its own, so there's no nested virtualization in your scenario. (Though it is possible to run VMs within VMs, and have hypvisors running inside hypervisors.)
    – HopelessN00b
    Mar 25, 2013 at 16:30
  • Thanks for the clarification. So are the new features of VMM 2012 (share-nothing live migration, etc.) available due to the new features of VMM 2012, or the new features of the Windows 2012 Hypervisor? If it's married to the hypervisor, I will be handcuffed, but if its due to VMM 2012, I'll be good to go. I guess I'll find out soon enough :) Thanks again.
    – Silky
    Mar 25, 2013 at 20:58

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