Q. What are the Linux Integration Components for Hyper-V?

A. Hyper-V provides integration services for Windows clients to enable improved performance and access to additional virtualization services. Microsoft has created integration components for Linux clients to allow a similar performance increase for certain Linux implementations, including SUSE Linux. These integration components can be downloaded from Microsoft. It's recommended you install them on Linux guests where possible. It should be noted that while the integration components have a very limited Linux distribution support (basically, only SUSE), they actually work on many Linux distributions.

In addition to an executable file, which expands to create an ISO file to be used to install the components, a PDF file is also available that has basic instructions installing the integration components.

The Integration Components include a Hypercall adapter to let Linux talk to the VMBus through synthetic devices for storage and network.

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