VMware with only Hyper-V Manager

When you have Hyper-V fully installed on a Windows 10 machine, a Standard User can only access Hyper-V via a server connection. This gave me an idea. I was wondering if you could install only Hyper-V Management Tools on the host system and still be able to run VMware.

In this set up would you then be able to run, inside VMware, MS Server 2012 in a Hyper-V server role and access Hyper-V VMs through this server via the Hyper-V Manager.

I do not have my own machines to test this on or I would not be asking, but the situation is something I am interested in for production purposes. Also the production machines are Dell i5s with 16GB of RAM. We may encounter bottlenecks for more than 3 VMs running in this fashion, but that is acceptable for the needs of the users.

Any confirmation of usability would be greatly appreciated.

Hi there

You can run VMware on a VIRTUAL Machine on a HOST system running HYPER-V. Actually IMO running SERVERS as VM's is quite sensible so long as you have the memory, fast Disks and CPU available.

The problem though in running a VM in this way is that things like USB connections won't probably work since the Virtual Bios won't probably recognize USB ports.

The other problem you'll get is that you will probably get into a "feedback loop" trying to access the HYPER-V connection from the embedded virtual machine.

It's a bit like using say RDP on a machine to connect to itself.

IMO the best way if you want to do this sort of thing is to actually install Esxi (Free BTW) on the Host which is a tiny OS that allows passthru of hardware resources to your VM's.

HYPER-V IMO is a good idea in principle but for typical home users who usually want to add a load of USB devices / graphic cards / multi-media then it's not really suitable. Esxi will allow your VM to access the actual hardware for these types of things.

HYPER-V also makes sharing stuff between VM and Host a bit "iffy" like HDD's. It's perfectly OK for things like Office / surfing etc but if you say want your VM to run legacy hardware etc then - Sorry @Kari as I know you really like HYPER-V !! then either run VMWARE/ VBOX from a native Host or use Esxi.

Why not though do this THE OTHER way around -- Run VMWARE on your HOST, then run a VM with HYPER-V and create your VM's that way. You've got a better chance to get more hardware compatibility too as you can share more HDD's. If these are Windows VM's you can connect easily enough from say a laptop via RDP without needing an account on the Host either.

Cheers
jimbo