How to install CentOS on Hyper-V with networking

I had one heck of a time getting CentOS working on Hyper-V. I am using Microsoft Hyper-V Server and CentOS 6.2. I sifted through many online forums and blog posts to make an “All-in-one” resource guide on how to get centOS working on Hyper-V. Don’t worry about installing a legacy NIC either

First I will explain what I used to get things working. I am using 3 machines for this “How to” and I will refer to them in this way:

• DC – Has Hyper-V Manager installed. Running AD
• HYPERV – The actual Hyper-V Server. Part of the Domain configured on DC.
• centOS – Hyper-V Linux Guest

You will need to download a few things:

• centOS ISO
• Linux Integration Components – Linux.IC.v3.2.iso
• On HYPERV I create a folder C:\iso and put copy both of the ISO files here.

Step by step how I installed CentOS on Hyper-V with Networking.

On DC open Hyper-V Manager. Create a new virtual machine.

Name the Virtual Machine. hit Next.

Enter the amount of ram you want to give the centOS guest machine.

Make sure to tell the Virtual Machine what Hyper-V Network to use.

I just took all the defaults.

Tell Hyper-V Manager to use an ISO file. C:\iso\CentOS-6.2-x86_64-bin-DVD1.iso

Hit next and finish

Right Click the centOS Guest and click START. When the VM starts click “Install or Upgrade…”

I would recommend that you hit ok to test the media. I’ve already done this so I will hit “Skip”.

Hit Ok

Hit Ok

Hit Ok

“Re-initialize all”.

Select your UTC.

Enter your password.

Use the defaults

Write changes to disk

Twiddle your thumbs and grab a coffee. This will take a few minutes.

Yay! You should be done now. REBOOT!

When the centOS machine reboot login with root and password you entered during the setup.

On DC in Hyper-V Manager we need to load the Linux Integrated components ISO in the virtual Machine.

Once you have applied the new ISO go back to the centOS VM. You will need to start typing a bunch of commands. If we were to take the PDF seriously and type in the commands as is you will get the error message:

ls: cannot access kmod-hyper-v-rhel6-43.1.x86_64.rpm: no such file or directory
ls: cannot access hyper-v-rhel6-43.1.x86_64.rpm: no such file or directory
RPM’s are missing

Wow that is a mouthful! So instead of wasting your time let’s not follow the PDF and do it correctly from the beginning. I’m going to explain the screenshot first so you can understand what is happening.

We’re going to mount the CD inside centOS. We then need to copy the files from the CD and then run the Linux Integration components installer. There are 5 command you will have to enter. The last command starts with a “.” just encase you didn’t see that.

You should see a bunch of things being installed. When done it will ask you to reboot your machine.

Here’s the command to reboot. When the machine boots please login as root.

Congrats. You now have the Linux Integration components installed. You can verify that they are by looking at the Hyper-V manager. If the tools tell you the heartbeat is “OK” you know you’ve successfully completed all the steps up till now. You should also be able to click inside the virtual machine without doing a dance and you can hit power on the Hyper-V tools and the VM should power down nicely.

Yippy! Actually not really. Our VM on reboot will not have a NIC. We first will need to right click the centOS VM and write down the MAC address Hyper-V gave the centOS VM.

We will now need to make a bunch of changes to some centOS config files. Very fun!

Press i Key on keyboard and type the below lines. Please notice I used the MAC address from the screen shot a few lines up

To save the file hit: “ESC” then “SHIFT + :” and then type “wq” and hit ENTER.

We will need to edit another file.

Again you’ll want to hit “I” to insert some info.

To save the file hit: “ESC” then “SHIFT + :” and then type “wq” and hit ENTER.

You will now need to bring up the network card (ifup eth01 command) and then verify that it got an IP address (ifconfig command)

The first thing I would do to test the NIC and it’s stability is by updating the box with all the updates. To do this we will use the yum command.

After all the updates get applied. Force the machine to reboot. Double check all the updates got applied. Hopefully I saved you a few hours of mindless searches