Microsoft, with development partners NetApp and Citrix, recently announced that support for FreeBSD 8.2 and 8.3 as a guest operating system (VOSE) will be coming to Hyper-V. Apparently this is being accomplished with the help of NetApp, Citrix, and the FreeBSD community.
Soon the list of non-Microsoft operating systems that are supported (not only work, but have been tested and you can call for assistance with) will be:
- FreeBSD 8.2
- FreeBSD 8.3
- CentOS 5.2
- CentOS 5.3
- CentOS 5.4
- CentOS 5.5
- CentOS 5.6
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.5
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.6
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.4
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.3
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 5.2
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 with Service Pack 1
- SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 10 with Service Pack 4
In addition to this, the Hyper-V integration components are included in Linux Kernel 3.3 and later, and Ubuntu 12.04 runs natively without any work from you on Hyper-V. I’ve got it running in my lab and can use it just like other guest OSs, e.g. run a clean shutdown from the Hyper-V Manager console.