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Is this possible? RDP from laptop to hyper-v vm on 8.1 pro.

B

BD2003

Lifer
So I've got this ridiculously weak laptop (stream 13) and a desktop With more power than I know what to do with (5820K, 2 gpus).

So is this a silly idea or a good one? Setup a win 8 vm on the desktop with hyper-v, and RDP into it from the laptop?

Right now I've been using RDP to connect directly to the desktop, but I don't like the way it takes over what I was doing on the desktop. I figure this might be a way for me to use both at the same time without interfering with each other.
 
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How will it perform vs rdp straight to the desktop?

Also I'd prefer not to waste resources on the desktop while not using VM is it possible to set it up in such a way that the VM will only be active when the laptop is connected to it? Like could I put the VM into suspend mode and have the RDP incoming connection automatically trigger it to wake up?
 
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BD2003 said:
How will it perform vs rdp straight to the desktop?
Click to expand...

Meh, fine.

Also I'd prefer not to waste resources on the desktop while not using VM is it possible to set it up in such a way that the VM will only be active when the laptop is connected to it? Like could I put the VM into suspend mode and have the RDP incoming connection automatically trigger it to wake up?
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My knowledge of desktop hyper-v is limited. It might support that. Some higher-end hypervisors do (for virtual desktop environments.) If you were feeling really clever, you could probably make it work that way with a little supportive scripting.

Hyper-V has a Powershell interface. You'd need to figure out a way to have the host do a suspend-VM when you disconnected and a Start-VM when you connected. So it would have to monitor the RDP port somehow.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh848559.aspx

But that said, an idle VM isn't going to be consuming much in the way of resources. Dunno that I'd worry about it.
 
Hmm, forgive me if these are noob questions, I'm not experienced with VMs at all. But as far as the resources go, I know you can share CPUs, but don't you need to dedicate a certain amount of ram? I have 16gb on my desktop, but I'd like to have 4GB available to the VM. I dunno if I'd want to permanently dedicate 4GB of memory to it though, especially if it's not in active use.

Also, I take it that suspending the OS running in a VM and suspending the VM itself isn't quite the same thing? In my mind the way it would ideally work is that I'd hibernate the VM OS between uses - on real machine that would clear the memory. But as I understand it, you can trigger WOL with RDP, so maybe it would just wake up and reload the VM OS back into memory?
 
BD2003 said:
Hmm, forgive me if these are noob questions, I'm not experienced with VMs at all. But as far as the resources go, I know you can share CPUs, but don't you need to dedicate a certain amount of ram? I have 16gb on my desktop, but I'd like to have 4GB available to the VM. I dunno if I'd want to permanently dedicate 4GB of memory to it though, especially if it's not in active use.
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That's correct - the RAM would be partitioned off. But if you have guest tools installed on the guest VM, it can "share" the RAM back with the system. It tells Hyper-V that "I have 4GB, but these 3GBs are empty" so Hyper-V tells your host that that RAM can be used for other things. It'll try to grab it back if it needs it, though, so you don't want to oversubscribe a system like that if you know you'll be doing heavy lifting on the host and the guests.

Also, I take it that suspending the OS running in a VM and suspending the VM itself isn't quite the same thing? In my mind the way it would ideally work is that I'd hibernate the VM OS between uses - on real machine that would clear the memory.
Click to expand...
Sort of. Suspending a VM in Hyper-V is almost exactly like hibernating a VM running on actual hardware. It's just that it's managed by the hypervisor (Hyper-V) and not from within the guest.

So you suspend a VM, resume it a few days later, and the guest VM is like, "-and if it hadn't been for that horse.... wait, what? It's Thursday? Woah, dude."

But as I understand it, you can trigger WOL with RDP, so maybe it would just wake up and reload the VM OS back into memory?
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That'll work for RDP into a physical computer, but Hyper-V doesn't support Wake-on-LAN for VMs. (VMWare does, but that's monies.) You'd need to start it from the host.
 
Hmm, good to know. These guest tools, are they included with a normal windows install?

Am I overthinking this though? If the desktop was running server I'd just be able to RDP into another user session in the background and VMs wouldn't need to get involved at all. Is there maybe a simpler solution to what I'm trying to do that would still work on 8.1 pro, and leech off the power of the desktop in a transparent way?
 
BD2003 said:
Hmm, good to know. These guest tools, are they included with a normal windows install?
Click to expand...

No, they aren't. But they're easy enough to install. Guest Tools is VMWare terminology, though - Hyper-V calls them Integration Services.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh846766.aspx#BKMK_step4

Am I overthinking this though? If the desktop was running server I'd just be able to RDP into another user session in the background and VMs wouldn't need to get involved at all. Is there maybe a simpler solution to what I'm trying to do that would still work on 8.1 pro, and leech off the power of the desktop in a transparent way?
Click to expand...

Simpler? Maybe. You can "adjust" Windows to allow concurrent logins via RDP.

http://www.nextofwindows.com/how-to...sers-log-in-windows-8-through-remote-desktop/

I haven't tried it, but it sounds like it will make your Win8.1 install work just like Server.
 
dave_the_nerd said:
No, they aren't. But they're easy enough to install. Guest Tools is VMWare terminology, though - Hyper-V calls them Integration Services.

http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh846766.aspx#BKMK_step4



Simpler? Maybe. You can "adjust" Windows to allow concurrent logins via RDP.

http://www.nextofwindows.com/how-to...sers-log-in-windows-8-through-remote-desktop/

I haven't tried it, but it sounds like it will make your Win8.1 install work just like Server.
Click to expand...

I tried that "adjustment" and it's working perfectly. So perfectly I can just close the lid and the laptop goes to sleep and the session disconnects. Open it back up and everything reconnects. Brilliant! Performance is night and day better than the laptop on it's own, and you'd never even guess it's not running locally.
 
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