Running Hyper V Server on K9N Platinum

Yes It can be done!

• Tested Hyper-V: Hyper-V Server 2012, ISO: 9600.16384.WINBLUE_RTM.130821-1623_X64FRE_SERVERHYPERCORE_EN-US-IRM_SHV_X64FRE_EN-US_DV5.ISO
• Tested MB: K9N Platinum, MSI-7250, Rev 1.1
• BIOS Version: MS-7250 V1.11, 4/7/2008 (from systeminfo)
• CPU:
  • AMD64 Family 15 Model 75 Stepping 2 AuthenticAMD ~2000 Mhz (from systeminfo)
  • also known as AMD Athlon(tm) 64 X2 Dual Core Processor 3800+ on Linux...

Important requirement:

• you must have recent BIOS to support Hyper-V

How to verify:

• Download and run this AMD utility:
  • https://web.archive.org/web/20081127223730/http://www.amd.com/us-en/assets/content_type/utilities/AMD-V_Hyper-V_Compatibility_Check_Utility.zip
• If the utility reports error (in my case that red message that BIOS update is needed) - you need to update BIOS or give up.

Updating BIOS

In my case I needed to update BIOS.

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

Updating BIOS my irreversibly brick your mother-board! Do this on your own risk only!

WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!

• I downloaded: https://download.msi.com/archive/mb/bos_exe/7250v1B.zip

• Again remind, that this BIOS is suitable for this MB only:

  • K9N Platinum, MSI-7250, tested on Rev 1.1 (revision is written on PCB between PCIe slots)

• Then I used old MS DOS floppy (generally NOT recommended by MSI) to unpack there above ZIP

• and Booted from floppy and run command:

  Afud408.exe A7250NMS.1B0 
  

WARNING!

Do not attempt to use any switches for Afud408.exe - I tried switch /U and it caused irrecoverable CMOS checksum error

• I was unable to save new configuration (and there is USB controller disabled in default). It was right time when floppy came to rescue me - the above command without any switches fixed my BIOS (uuuuffffff!!!!).

• then reset computer

WARNING! It reset also my MAC address - now my LAN cards have these MACs :-)

• 1st LAN: 60:50:40:30:20:10
• 2nd LAN: 60:50:40:30:20:11

I don't mind this...

Then I run AMD utility again and it showed me green text that this machine is Hyper-V compatible.

Hyper-V 2012 setup

There are two ways hot to setup Hyper-V:

1. Free but Hard way using Hyper-V Server 2012. The problem is that without Active Directory Domain you have to do lot of painful tricks to successfully connect Client Hyper-V Manager (that has to run on another machine than Hyper-V Server) to remote Hyper-V Server.

2. Easy way using Window Server - but it requires Windows Server license. In such case you simply install Hyper-V role and Hyper-V Manager on same machine.

Please note that regarding Hyper-V only these products will work on MS-7250 motherboard with AMD X2 Opteron (because it is missing SLAT feature required by later Hyper-V versions):

• Hyper-V Server up to 2012 (verified)
• Windows Sever up to 2012R2 (verified)
• there is NO SUITABLE Workstation (Personal) Windows for Opteron - even Windows 8 (at least Pro edition) requires SLAT - so it will not work on this Opteron machine.

TODO