As UCS moves into more and more Hyper-V shops, it only makes sense that customers will want to run the UCS Platform Emulator on Hyper-V instead of VMware tools. And with the inclusion of Hyper-V on Windows 8 and 8.1 it makes even more sense.
Fortunately, The emulator works fine on Hyper-V. Here is how I got it to run on Hyper-V. I have tested this on the Hyper-V that comes with Windows Server as well as the Hyper-V that comes with Windows 8.
First, the Cisco distribution assumes that people will be running it on a VMware product, as it comes as a VMware defined virtual machine. There are a number of ways to convert this VMware virtual machine to a Hyper-V virtual machine. Perhaps the easiest is to use Microsoft System Center Virtual Machine Manager. Microsoft has built in the ability to convert VMs from VMware into their management product. However, not everyone has System Center Virtual Machine Manager installed, or they simply want to run it on their desktop/laptop or even their Windows Surface Pro (as I am doing). There are a number of free converters that can be downloaded from the web. I converted the vmdk files with the free converter from Starwind software (http://www.starwindsoftware.com/converter). It's a pretty simple installation, so I won't go through the steps for installing it.
Here are the steps I followed to convert the UCS PE from a VMware VM to a Hyper-V VM. NOTE: I don't know why, but for both systems on which I installed this (Windows Server 2012 R2 and Windows 8.1) The VM took a long time (20 minutes) to come up the first time. Have patience - it will eventually complete its configuration.
1. Convert each of the vmdk files to vhd files. I left mine as dynamic disks. The Starwind conversion program has to be run individually for each vmdk file.
2. Create a Hyper-V VM. By default, Hyper-V on Windows Server 2012/R2 or Windows 8/8.1 creates a VM with a Network Adapter, a SCSI controller, and DVD drive attached on an IDE channel. After creating the VM, remove the Network Adapter, the SCSI controller, and the DVD drive. They will not be used and you need the ports for other uses. The version of Linux used for the UCS PE does not have Microsoft's Hyper-V integration components as part of it so network adapters and SCSI controllers are not available for use.
3. Assign the first UCSPE.vhd as the boot volume on IDE 0, drive 0. Assign the rest of the vhd files to the remaining IDE ports.
4. Create three legacy NICs.
a. Option 1 - Use Hyper-V External Network Switch
i. Create the NICs on a Hyper-V external switch that has DHCP-enabled (or manually configure)
ii. When the VM starts, you will get some errors because the network is not configured
iii. Login config/config
iv. Change network settings to use DHCP (or manually configure)
v. This will allow everything to come up correctly. System automatically restarts and you can use it.
b. Option 2 - Use Hyper-V Internal Network Switch
i. Create a Hyper-V internal switch – better option for laptop only use
ii. Assign a vNIC on your laptop to this switch and give it some IP address, e.g. 192.168.10.1/24
iii. When the VM starts, you will get some errors because the network is not configured
iv. Login config/config
v. Change network settings to use same IP range as your laptop on this switch.
vi. Add a gateway – meaningless unless you are going to provide something on your laptop
vii. System will restart, but you will see an error on the ntp service. Not critical.
You will have to install Firefox as an available browser from which to launch the connection to the GUI. Or you can access it from PowerTool.
