Written by 4:27 pm Microsoft, Microsoft Azure, PowerShell, Virtualization, Windows, Windows Server • 12 Comments

HVC – SSH Direct for Linux VMs on Hyper-V

Hyper-V HVC SSH Direct for Linux VMs

If you are running Hyper-V on Windows 10 or Windows Server 2016, you probably know about a feature called PowerShell Direct. I also mentioned that PowerShell Direct is one of the 10 hidden features in Hyper-V you should know about. PowerShell Direct lets you remotely connect to a Windows Virtual Machine running on a Hyper-V host, without any network connection inside the VM. PowerShell Direct uses the Hyper-V VMBus to connect inside the Virtual Machine. Of course, this feature is convenient if you need it for automation and configuration for Virtual Machines. As this is great for Windows virtual machines, it does not work with Virtual Machines running Linux. In the latest Windows 10, Windows Server 1803 (RS4) and Windows Server 2019 (RS5) Insider Preview builds, Microsoft enabled a tool called HVC. HVC is a tool which allows you to do some command line VM management. HVC SSH is basically PowerShell Direct for Linux VMs.

This allows connecting to a Linux VM using SSH over the Hyper-V VMBus. You are also able to copy files inside a virtual machine using scp, similar to Copy-item -ToSession using PowerShell Direct. You can read more about PowerShell Direct on my blog or the Microsoft Doc pages.

How to connect to Linux VMs using SSH Direct

HVC SSH on Hyper-V

To connect to Linux VMs using SSH Direct (HVC) type hvc.exe into the command line or PowerShell. This will give you all the possible command options. Of course, SSH has to big configured inside the Linux virtual machine.

hvc ssh Thomas@VMNAME

To make this work, the SSH server inside the VM needs to be configured.

Final Thoughts

A pretty cool tool which will be available in the official releases of Windows 10 and Windows Server 1803, released this spring. Later this year this feature will also be included in Windows Server 2019. If you want to try it out today, give the Windows Insider Preview builds a spin.

Thanks to Ben Armstrong for pointing this out ;)

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