Hyper-V Windows Server 2012 guest VM support
In this section, we will cover the guest operating systems supported by Windows Server 2012. We will also divide these supported operating systems into two major categories in the server and the client operating systems.
Guest server operating systems
All the following listed server operating systems are supported to be virtualized on Windows Server 2012:
Windows Server 2012
Windows Server 2008 R2 with Service Pack 1
Windows Server 2008 R2
Windows Server 2008 with Service Pack 2
Windows Server 2008
Windows Home Server 2011
Windows Small Business Server 2011
Windows Server 2003 R2 with Service Pack 2
Windows Server 2003 with Service Pack 2
CentOS 6.0 to 6.2
Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6.0 to 6.2
SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 Service Pack 2
Guest client operating systems
All the following client operating systems are compatible and supported to be virtualized on Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V:
Windows 8
Windows 7 with Service Pack 1
Windows 7
Windows Vista with Service Pack 2
Windows XP with Service Pack 3
Windows XP x64 Edition with Service Pack 2