Hyper-V: Improve Ubuntu 16.04 video performance

Question

I'm running Ubuntu 16.04 desktop in a Hyper-V virtual machine on a Windows 10 desktop computer. It is working fine, but video performance is very far from "smooth." Any ideas on how to install the Hyper-V Linux Integration Services (LIS)?

I found an article that said to edit /etc/initramfs-tools/modules, but that didn't help at all.

http://www.serverwatch.com/server-tutorials/installing-and-activating-hyper-v-linux-integration-services.html

Solution 1

I also tried out Hyper-V on Windows 10 Pro with Ubuntu Desktop 64-bit 16.04 LTS as guest system. I am not satisfied with the graphics performance. I do not know if i missed out a setting. If anybody finds a good solution i would be happy to know about it too.

But this is what i did. I read and followed the information from the Microsoft documentation on TechNet. There is a table with features of Hyper-V. Most interestingly in this case is the row mentioning "Hyper-V specific video device". But it does not mention anything about Windows 10. Only about Windows Server host systems.

I did not change anything in /etc/initramfs-tools/modules. However, i followed the instructions and installed:

$> sudo apt-get update
$> sudo apt-get install --install-recommends linux-virtual-lts-xenial
$> sudo apt-get install --install-recommends linux-tools-virtual-lts-xenial linux-cloud-tools-virtual-lts-xenial

Then reboot. After reboot i found this:

$> lsmod | grep 'hyperv\|hv_'
hv_balloon        24576   0
hyperv_fb         20480   2
hv_storvsc        20480   3
hv_netvsc         36864   0
hv_utils          24576   2
hyperv_keyboard   16384   0
hid_hyperv        16384   0
hid              118784   2 hid_hyperv,hid_generic
hv_vmbus          73728   7 hv_balloon,hyperv_keyboard,hv_netvsc,hid_hyperv,hv_utils,hyperv_fb,hv_storvsc

So it seems to me that something worked out. But the graphics performance still seems to be poor. I am not sure if it improved maybe a little. Maybe you try it out and tell me if it helps?

Solution 2

I get a performance issue only with 64 bits Ubuntu (16.04 or 18.04), but no performance issue with 32 bits.

I resolved the performance issue by enabling "Migrate to a physical computer with a different processor version" in Settings → Processor → Compatibility.

(So it seems this may be related to CPU architecture.)

Comments

[Tim G]

Have you made sure that Intel VT-D is (sometimes more than one setting) enabled in your BIOS/UEFI? AMD equivalent, if applicable, is IOMMU.

[Trevor Sullivan]

@TimG In Task Manager, it says "Virtualization: Enabled." I'm using an Intel Core i5-2500k. This particular CPU doesn't support VT-D. Is that a requirement? How else might that missing feature impact performance?

[Tim G]

Ah, I gave a slightly older marketing name; it's VT-x on that proc/chipset. Check to see if that is enabled in BIOS/UEFI. (The Virtualization: Enabled flag you refer to is probably the hypervisorlaunchtype auto setting in your BCD, which is automatically enabled by Windows when you do all that Hyper-V setup stuff. If it were off, I don't think the vm would even launch.)

[Trevor Sullivan]

Thanks for the response -- it doesn't seem like there's very good support from Microsoft for graphics in Linux on Hyper-V. Maybe they'll improve this in the future.

[Berg YE]

I resolved the performance issue by enable the 'migrate to a physical computer with a different processor version' through 'settings->processor->comatibility'

[Eliah Kagan]

Thanks. I've edited this to include that so it's clear that this is intended as an answer and what it is recommending. (Of course, please feel free to re-edit to make further changes.)