Hyper-V
A series about Hyper-V — the hypervisor included in every edition of Windows Server: the role installs with a single command, needs no separate license, and can be managed entirely from PowerShell.
The first part is the shortest path from a clean server to an installed guest system. After it you will have a working virtual machine, even if not everything in the commands is clear yet. The following parts go through each step of that path in turn: how the hypervisor is built, virtual disks, networking, processors and memory, checkpoints. Then the series goes beyond a single host: managing from a workstation, moving machines between hosts and failover clusters.
Everything is done from PowerShell; Hyper-V Manager and Failover Cluster Manager are mentioned only as "this is how it looks in the UI". Every statement about Hyper-V's behavior is backed by a link to Microsoft's documentation. The examples were built on Windows Server 2025.
Creating the first virtual machine
The first Hyper-V virtual machine from PowerShell: checking the CPU, installing the role, a switch, New-VM, booting from ISO and the console.
How is Hyper-V built?
Hyper-V is a type 1 hypervisor: it starts before Windows and brings it up as the root partition with the real device drivers, and guest machines as child partitions that reach disks and the network through the VMBus channel. Machine configuration is kept by the VMMS service, and each running machine is served by its own
vmwp.exeprocess. A machine's generation is chosen at creation and defines its virtual hardware, while its configuration version defines which hosts it will run on.Setting up virtual disks
Hyper-V virtual disks from PowerShell: VHDX, disk types, online resizing, compaction, SCSI controllers, pass-through and VHD Set.
Setting up virtual machine networking
Hyper-V networking from PowerShell: virtual switches, VLANs and private VLANs, SET, VM network adapters, MAC, DhcpGuard and bandwidth.
Allocating processors and memory
Processors and memory of Hyper-V VMs: vCPU, reserve, limit and weight, NUMA, dynamic memory, Smart Paging, live changes and nested virtualization.
How do checkpoints work?
A checkpoint freezes the VM's current disk and starts writing changes to a differencing
.avhdxfile; reverting returns the VM to the frozen state, and deleting the checkpoint merges the.avhdxback into the parent disk. A production checkpoint (the default) captures a consistent state of the disks without memory, a standard one saves memory as well. A checkpoint lives on the same volume as the VM and is useless without the parent disk, so it is no substitute for a backup.Managing Hyper-V from a workstation
Managing Hyper-V from Windows 10/11: management tools, Hyper-V Administrators, domain and non-domain hosts, vmconnect and PowerShell Direct.
Moving virtual machines between hosts
Moving Hyper-V VMs: export and import, live migration without a cluster with Kerberos, storage migration, processor compatibility and Hyper-V Replica.
Building a failover cluster
A Hyper-V failover cluster from PowerShell: shared storage, CSV, quorum and witnesses, Test-Cluster, New-Cluster, networks and VMs in the cluster.
Maintaining a Hyper-V cluster
Hyper-V cluster maintenance: node pause, Cluster-Aware Updating, balancing, anti-affinity, cluster OS upgrade, workgroup cluster and logs.