Enabling Discrete Device Assignment on Windows 10

Zsolt Lázár 1 Reputation point
2021-03-08T05:59:00.457+00:00

Hello,

I've been experimenting with different versions of Windows 10, and I am almost ready to buy a license, but unfortunately there is one major problem that is a showstopper for me. For my work, I need to be able to pass through physical devices to a linux-based HyperV virtual machine. Microsoft calls this feature DDA or Discrete Device Assignment, and as far as I can tell it is only supported on Server editions of Windows. Unfortunately it is not viable for me to use Server as my main workstation OS. Dual-booting with it is also not an option.

Is there any way to somehow enable this feature on Windows 10 with some sort of registry/group policy hack? Or perhaps is it possible to move the feature from a Server installation over to a Win10 installation so I can use it?

My master goal is to pass through a PCI device (a USB3.1 controller/root hub) to a linux-based virtual machine. GPU passthrough would certainly be useful in the future, but right now it's not as important as the root hub.

DDA seems like a mature technology at this point, so I think it should be included in Pro, or at least in Enterprise/Pro for Workstation. Linux can already to this out of the box and it's a free operating system.

Currently this is the only thing that's holding me back from getting a proper license for Windows 10, and I would really appreciate it if someone form the Server or HyperV teams could point me in the right direction and show me how I can enable the feature.

Thanks in advance

Hyper-V
Hyper-V
A Windows technology providing a hypervisor-based virtualization solution enabling customers to consolidate workloads onto a single server.
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  1. essjae 251 Reputation points
    2021-03-08T19:55:45.697+00:00

    I don't know about getting to to work in Linux VMs, but Windows VMs should work.
    Here's info on getting a GPU passed through:
    https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/jym8xz/gpu_partitioning_is_finally_possible_in_hyperv/

  2. JiayaoZhu 3,911 Reputation points
    2021-03-10T06:51:32.19+00:00

    Hi,

    As I understand you may want to know whether you could use win10 to configure DDA so that you could pass through your PCIe to your linux-based VM.

    According to the article, it only supports Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2016, Windows Server 2016, Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2019, Windows Server 2019.

    https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-server/virtualization/hyper-v/plan/plan-for-deploying-devices-using-discrete-device-assignment

    And after research, it seems there's no official method to bypass DDA for Windows 10, so it's not recommended to use third-party method to configure DDA for Windows 10 host in case you meet any unexpected issue. Thanks for your understanding!

    Thank you for your time! If you have any other concerns or questions, please feel free to feedback!

    Best regards
    Joann

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