Users Guide

Solutions Overview Guide 25
Appendix A: Integration Services in Hyper-V
As mentioned in the introductory section of this solutions guide, Integration
Services are meant to provide better integration between child and parent
partitions. The components available with the Integration Services enable the
following:
• Installs device drivers for Synthetic devices (SCSI controller, Network
Controller)
• Installs Fastpath filter driver that allows the emulated IDE controller to
switch to synthetic mode
• Installs mouse integration drivers
• Enables time synchronization between child and parent
• Enables the VSS-based backup of virtual machines to be initiated from the
parent partition
• Enables guest OS shutdown to be initiated from the virtualization
management consoles
It is strongly recommended that Integration Services be installed on all
Hyper-V virtual machines to get the best performance and enhanced feature
functionality. Microsoft makes available Integration Services for all supported
guest operating systems. It is packaged into a CD image and can be installed
on guest operating systems by mounting the CD ISO image on the virtual
machine. When using the Virtual Machine Connection window to connect
to a virtual machine, this can be done via Action→Insert Integration Services
Setup Disk on the Windows guest operating system.
NOTE: The scope of functionality enabled by Integration Services is operating
system specific. For example, the Integration Components for certain guest
operating systems such as Windows XP Professional SP2 and earlier do not have
support for Synthetic SCSI devices. Refer to Microsoft documentation at
www.microsoft.com/hyper-v for scope of support for the guest operating systems.
The Integration Components for supported Linux operating systems are
currently available from the http://connect.microsoft.com website under the
Linux Integration Services for Hyper-V Connection Program. For the latest
information on integration services, refer to www.microsoft.com/hyper-v.