In Steven Sinofsky’s this blog – Bringing Hyper-V to “Windows 8”. He talks about that Windows 8 will support virtualization on the “client” OS.  This is very helpful for developers as they typically have the need to setup additional test environment on their PC/Laptop.

Hardware Requirements

Hyper-V supports creation of both 32-bit and 64-bit operating systems in VMs. To run Client Hyper-V, your computer must:

• Be running a 64-bit version of Windows 8.
• Have a CPU that supports Second Level Address Translation (SLAT), To determine if your CPU supports SLAT, go to How to tell if your CPU Supports SLAT

Enabling Client Hyper-V

1. In the Windows 8 Control Panel, tap or click Programs, and then tap or click Programs and Features.
2. Tap or click Turn Windows features on or off.
3. In the Windows Features dialog box, select the check boxes for the Hyper-V items that you want to install, and then tap or click OK.
4. Tap or click Close.

Note: You must restart your computer to complete the Hyper-V installation. After restarting the computer, you can use Hyper-V Manager or Windows PowerShell to create and manage VMs. You can also use VM Console to connect to VMs remotely.

Enabling Client Hyper-V with Command Line Tool

• Use Windows PowerShell. At the Windows PowerShell prompt (using administrator credentials), type the following:

Enable-WindowsOptionalFeature -Online -FeatureName Microsoft-Hyper-V

• Use the Windows Command Prompt. At the Windows command prompt (using administrator credentials), type the following:

Dism /online /enable-feature /featurename:Microsoft-Hyper-V –All

What Isn’t Included in Client Hyper-V?

Difference between Windows 8 Client Hyper-V and Server Hyper-V