This is a list of tools, resources, and external links to download and learn about those tools.

↑ Back to top

Supported Microsoft Tools (Solution Accelerators, Product Downloads, etc.)

NOTE: This list is roughly in the order of use. For example, you will use the Microsoft Assessment and Planning Toolkit (MAP) during the planning phase, which is before deployment. 

• Microsoft Hardware-Assisted Virtualization Detection Tool (does not work for Windows Server 2008 R2).
• Microsoft Assessment and Planning (MAP) Toolkit
• Microsoft iSCSI Software Initiator Version 2.08 (not required for Hyper-V host servers—as well as for any VM running Windows Vista and newer versions).
• Virtualization Detect Tool (VpDetect.exe) — included in the Windows Logo Kit 
  • NOTE:  Microsoft Connect (log-in required).
• Virtual Machine Detect Tool (aka IsVM, DetectVM.exe) — included in the Windows Logo Kit 
  • NOTE:  Microsoft Connect (log-in required).
• P2V: Converting Physical Computers to Virtual Machines in SCVMM 2008 R2, download the SCVMM 2008 R2 eval version
• V2V: Converting VMWare Virtual Machines in SCVMM 2008 R2, download the SCVMM 2008 R2 eval version.
• Microsoft Server Energy Savings Calculator.
• Microsoft Integrated Virtualization Calculator.
• SCONFIG
• Microsoft Office Visio 2007 Professional Add-In for Rack Server Virtualization (Virtual Rack) (aka “Visio Add-In for Rack Server Virtualization”).
• KB977238: Hyper-V Best Practices Analyzer is now available for Windows Server 2008 R2
  • Update for Best Practices Analyzer for HYPER-V for Windows Server 2008 R2 x64 Edition (KB977238).
• P2V Migration for Software Assurance (Beta) (MSConnect sign in required)
• Virtual Machine Servicing Tool (VMST) 2012
  • Previous Version: Virtual Machine Servicing Tool (VMST) 3.0

↑ Back to top

Microsoft Products and Solutions that are Built upon Hyper-V Technology

• Hyper-V Server.
• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI).
  • Remote Desktop Services Connector for System Center Virtual Machine Manager
• System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SC VMM).
  • System Center Virtual Machine Manager Self-Service Portal 2.0 (SSP 2.0)
• Visual Studio Lab Management.
  • Specifically read about Network Emulation.
  • VM Prep Tool for Visual Studio Lab Management
• System Center Configuration Manager Physical to Virtual (P2V) Migration Toolkit (designed to assist in situations where there are remote Configuration Manager 2007 site servers that need to be retained during the side-by-side migration process to Configuration Manager 2012).

↑ Back to top

Remote Management from Client Versions of Windows

• KB952627: Description of the Windows Vista Management Tools update for the release version of Hyper-V (Manage Windows Server 2008 with Hyper-V RTM or Hyper-V Server 2008 RTM)
  • Hyper-V Remote Management Update for Windows Vista (KB952627)
  • Update for Windows Vista (KB952627) (the same package as the above)
  • Hyper-V Remote Management Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB952627)
  • Update for Windows Vista for x64-based Systems (KB952627) (the same package as the above)
• KB970203: Hyper-V Management Tools update for Windows Vista Service Pack 2 (Manage Windows Server 2008 or Hyper-V Server 2008 with Service Pack 2. Requires one of the above packages to be already installed)
  • Update for Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Management Tools for Hyper-V (KB970203)
  • Update for Windows Vista Service Pack 2 Management Tools for Hyper-V for x64-based Systems (KB970203)
• KB958830: Description of Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 (Manage Windows Server 2008 R2 or Hyper-V Server 2008 R2)
  • Remote Server Administration Tools for Windows 7 with Service Pack 1 (SP1)

↑ Back to top

Unsupported Microsoft Tools (Sysinternals, MSDN/ScriptCenter Code Galleries, TechNet/MSDN Blogs)

• Disk2VHD (an utility that creates VHD (Virtual Hard Disk) versions of physical disks).
• Windows(R) Image to Virtual Hard Disk (WIM2VHD) Converter.
• Microsoft Hyper-V VM State to Memory Dump Converter (vm2dmp.exe).
• Virtual Machine Migration Test Wizard.
• Hyper-V Remote Management Configuration Utility (HVRemote).
• Script to automate HyperV installation.
• nvspbind (Network Virtual Service Provider Bind — a tool for modifying network bindings from the command line).
• nvspcrub (Network Virtual Service Provider Scrub — a tool for removing Hyper-V Virtual Networking Configuration from the parent partition).
  • Also note another useful script that is named nvspinfo.js. It is contained in the same project but downloaded separately.
• VHD tool (a command-line tool which provides useful VHD manipulation functions including instant creation of large fixed-size VHDs).
• Shell (right-click context menu) extensions for Virtual Hard Disks.
• PowerShell Script to Connect .ISO to a VM [Hyper-V]
• Create bootable USB drive for Hyper-V Server 2008 R2.
• VMC to Hyper-V Import tool.
• VMMap v3.1. VMMap is a process virtual and physical memory analysis utility.
• RAMMap v1.11. Use RAMMap to gain understanding of the way Windows manages memory, to analyze application memory usage.
• Hyper-V BPA HTML report
• Hyper-V Cmdlets in Windows PowerShell 3.0
• Using Convert-VHD to convert VHD to VHDx and change from -Dynamic to Fixed

↑ Back to top

Community Tools (CodePlex and blogs)

• Probus-IT Hyper-v manager (HVM) GUI Hyper-v Manager - Hakan Linden
• Core Configurator
• Core Configurator for core 2012 Hyper-v Server
• Codeplex (preset to search for all hyper-v projects and tools)
• Hyper-V Web Manager.
• PowerShell Management Library for Hyper-V (PSHyperv). 
• PAL (Performance Analysis of Logs) tool is a powerful tool that reads in a performance monitor counter log and analyzes it using known thresholds.
• Powershellscript to get a detailed report of your Hyper-v Vhost and VM's hosted on it, works for standalone Datacenter 2012 Servers
• PowerShellscript to easily create hyper-v Vm in stand alone Datacenter 2012 Servers
• PowerShell Script to Shutdown and Export Hyper-V VMs on Windows Server 2012, one at a time
• PowerShell scripts Configure and manager your Free Core Server 2012, it even has a replacement for VMconnect and MSTSC, neither of which comes with Free Core Server 2012.
• PowerShell script and freeRDP to replace VMconnect and MSTSC, neither of which comes with Free Core Server 2012. (A Codeplex Project)
• PowerShell Script to easily create Vswitches and configure NIC teaming. (from the Altaro Blog)
• Tips and tricks for Free Core Server 2012 Blog - James Stephan's Blog
• Core Server 2012 PowerShell Script Hyper-v Manager -A codeplex project to offer a free hyper-v manager 

↑ Back to top

Third-party Free Tools

• VMDK to VHD Converter.
• Veeam ONE reporting for Hyper-V
• StarWind V2V Converter (FREE VMDK-to-VHD and VHD-to-VMDK converter)
• StarWind Tape Redirector (FREE tape drive and tape autoloader redirector, parent mounted tapes could be used from inside a guest VM in a loopback or over whole LAN over iSCSI)
• StarWind Native SAN for Hyper-V (FREE DAS-to-SAN emulator allowing to cluster two Hyper-V hosts w/o any shared storage at all, pretty much like DRBD or HAST but for Windows)
• Unitrends Enterprise Backup Free Edition is a free software version of the Unitrends backup and recovery solution. It enables you to protect up to 4 VMs absolutely free.
• Hyper-V Monitor Gadget for Windows Sidebar.
• VMToolit.com VHD Expander.
• MoonSols LiveCloudKd (enables live debugging a Virtual Machine from the Host).
• TMurgent Technologies Hyper-V_Mon free VM monitoring tool.
• IOMETER Open source I/O subsystem measurement and characterization tool for single and clustered systems
• VHD attach adds mount (attach) and unmount (detach) to the context menu of VHDs.
• GRC Securable SecurAble displays the status of the three most significant security-related processor features.
• Royal TS V2: RDP and Hyper-V management (free for up to 10 connections)
• Altaro Free hyper-v backup ( 2 VM's for free forever)
• FreeRDP a replacement for VMconnect.exe and MSTSC.exe, neither of which come with free core server 2012,or get the complete already  built package from codeplex that uses a PowerShell wrapper script.
• Free Hyper-v manager from Probus-IT (it is currently free in Alpha but should turn $BUY when it releases)
• Event Viewer for Free Core Server 2012
• File Managers for Free Core server 2012 (Free Commander - old school dual pane), (A43 looks like windows 7)
• Start Menu for Free Core Server 2012 - It is a USB file launcher app but it works great.
• PoSHStats for Hyper-V Resource Usage Metering Tool (Hyper-V Monitoring)
• Veeam Task Manager for Hyper-V - Free tool provides detailed Hyper-V performance monitoring metrics for CPU and memory at the individual VM level
• Veeam Backup Free Edition - Hyper-V VM management (no limits on the # of VMs and no expiration date)

↑ Back to top

Hardware-Specific Tools from OEMs and Vendors

• AMD Virtualization™ Technology and Microsoft® Hyper-V™ System Compatibility Check Utility.
• Intel® Processor Identification Utility.
• HP Sizer for Microsoft Windows Server 2008 R2 Hyper-V (aka HP Sizer for Microsoft Hyper-V 2008 R2).
• NetApp ApplianceWatch PRO for OpsMgr/SCVMM.
• Brocade and Microsoft Virtualization.

---

Partner Solutions (Commercially Available)

• VMUtil, Inc VHDBackup (VHDBack) and VHDBackup Enterprise Edition (VHDBackEE). Optimizes backups of fixed size VHDs and produces a compressed VHD image significantly faster and with considerably less disk I/O.
• VMUtil, Inc VHDCopy and VHDCopy Enterprise Edition (VHDCopEE). Accelerate fixed size VHD file copies (up to 10X faster under certain circumstances).
• VMUtil, Inc VMProv. Instant provisioning of new VMs from existing VHDs.
• Stratus ftServer. Fault Tolerance (FT) for Virtual Machines (99.999+ percent availability). For more info: Stratus Launches ‘Mission-Critical Hyper-V’ across ftServer Line.
• BLADE Network Technologies VMready with Virtual Vision. Access Control Lists (ACLs), Quality of Service (QoS) attributes, VLAN membership and Traffic shaping and monitoring assisted by network equipment and enforced per VM independently of its current Host location.
• Sanbolic Melio Shared Storage. Symmetric cluster file system that enables per VM Storage Quality of Service (QoS) and does not require dedicated “Coordinator Node” for operations such as VSS backup. For more info: The Major Differences Between CSV and Melio 2010.
• Double-Take Availability. Continuous replication and automatic failover capabilities for disaster recovery, high availability, and centralized backup.
• NAKIVO Hyper-V BackupNAKIVO Hyper-V Backup
  • NAKIVO Backup software was recommended by Getapp.com as one of the best backup software in 2022, More info: https://www.getapp.com/security-software/backup/category-leaders/

↑ Back to top

VMware to Hyper-V Conversion Solutions

• Microsoft Virtual Machine Converter 2.0 - MVMC 2.0 is a Microsoft-supported, stand-alone solution to convert virtual machines and disks from VMware hosts to Hyper-V hosts and Microsoft Azure.
• Migration Automation Toolkit for MVMC 2.0 - The MAT is a collection of PowerShell scripts that will automate conversions using MVMC 2.0 and it is back-ended by a SQL instance (SQL Express will work). You can use it to convert several machines at once, on a single server – or scale it out and execute conversions on many servers at the same time.
• Disk2vhd - A utility that creates Virtual Hard Disk (VHD) versions of physical disks, or VMware VM disks, for use on Hyper-V-based VMs.  Can be used online, and uses Windows' Volume Snapshot capability to create consistent point-in-time snapshots of the volumes you want to include in a conversion.
• Xtreme VM Migrator - Builds on top of Microsoft’s MVMC 2.0 and MAT, by providing deep integration into System Center Orchestrator. Xtreme VM Migrator provides complete automation using System Center Orchestrator in order to collect and convert virtual machines from VMware to Hyper-V.
• Vision Solutions Double-Take MOVE - Migrate physical, virtual, and cloud server workloads with real-time replication from a single, intuitive user console.  Double-Take MOVE migrates your entire server environment including the system state and file system (including file and folder permissions, attributes, compression and encryption settings) without suspending or interrupting production operations.
• NetApp Project Shift - Utilize the power of the NetApp storage array, in conjunction with MAT4SHIFT, for automation, to rapidly convert VMware virtual machines, over to Hyper-V.  With the array-based approach, migrations of VMs that are terabytes in size, can be completed in just a few minutes.
• NetIQ PlateSpin Migrate - powerful workload portability solution that automates the process of moving server workloads over the network between physical servers, virtual hosts and image archives. PlateSpin Migrate remotely decouples workloads from the underlying server hardware and streams them to and from physical or virtual hosts - all from a single point of control.

↑ Back to top

Application-specific Performance Planning/Testing/Analysis tools

Microsoft Exchange Server Jetstress Tool

• 2007 (08.02.0060).
  • Microsoft Exchange Server Jetstress Tool (32 bit).
  • Microsoft Exchange Server Jetstress Tool (64 bit).
• 2010 (14.00.0639.013)
  • Microsoft Exchange Server Jetstress 2010 Beta (64 bit).
  • More info: Jetstress 2010 (Beta Preview) now available.
• 2010 (14.01.0225.017)
  • Microsoft Exchange Server Jetstress Tool (64bit).

SQLIOSim

• KB231619: How to use the SQLIOSim utility to simulate SQL Server activity on a disk subsystem.
• SQLIOSim Tool (32 bit).
• SQLIOSim Tool (64 bit).
• SQLIOSim Tool (IA-64 bit).
• More info: SQLIOSim.

↑ Back to top

See Also

• Hyper-V Portal
• Hyper-V Portal from Veeam

↑ Back to top