Linux Integration Services 3.1 for Hyper-V

I had a mad busy day with meetings at customer sites today and that’s when this great news breaks out.  Microsoft has released version 3.1 of the Linux Integration Components (or Services) for Hyper-V.
The supported operating systems for 3.1 are:

• “Red Hat Enterprise Linux (RHEL) 6.0 and 6.1 x86 and x64 (Up to 4 vCPU)
• CentOS 6.0 x86 and x64 (Up to 4 vCPU)”

SLES 10 SP3 and 11, and RHEL 5.2 / 5.3 / 5.4 / 5.5 still have support using Integration Services 2.1 for Hyper-V.
Supported Host OS’s include:

• “Windows Server 2008 Standard, Windows Server 2008 Enterprise, and Windows
• Server 2008 Datacenter (64-bit versions only)
• Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008
• Windows Server 2008 R2 Standard, Windows Server 2008 R2 Enterprise, and Windows
• Server 2008 R2 Datacenter
• Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008 R2”

Service Packs 1 or 2 of those host OSs are supported too.
The features of V3.1 of the Linux Integration Services are:

• “Driver support: Linux Integration Services supports the network controller and the IDE and
  SCSI storage controllers that were developed specifically for Hyper-V.
• Fastpath Boot Support for Hyper-V: Boot devices now take advantage of the block
  Virtualization Service Client (VSC) to provide enhanced performance.
• Timesync: The clock inside the virtual machine will remain synchronized with the clock on
  the virtualization server with the help of the pluggable time source device.
• Integrated Shutdown: Virtual machines running Linux can be shut down from either Hyper-V
  Manager or System Center Virtual Machine Manager by using the “Shut Down” command.
• Symmetric Multi-Processing (SMP) Support: Supported Linux distributions can use up to 4 virtual processors (VP) per virtual machine.  SMP support is not available for 32-bit Linux guest operating systems running on Windows Server 2008 Hyper-V or Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2008.
• Heartbeat: Allows the virtualization server to detect whether the virtual machine is running
  and responsive.
• KVP (Key Value Pair) Exchange: Information about the running Linux virtual machine can
  be obtained by using the Key Value Pair exchange functionality on the Windows Server 2008
  virtualization server”.

The really big news about the new Integration Components is that they now install using rpm, making the installation much easier (Windows admins thank you!).
You should really take a look at the KVP feature in the PDF (on the download page).  There’s some interesting information and links on how to use it to get information, such as the Linux IC version from the VMs on your hosts using PowerShell.