Hyper-V vs Virtual Machine Platform vs Windows Hypervisor Platform settings in Programs and Features? [closed]

Solution 1:

How do they correlate?

They are separate independent features and do not directly correlate with one another.

What does each setting do exactly?

  • Hyper-V is Microsoft's Hypervisor.

  • Virtual Machine Platform - "Enables platform support for virtual machines" and is required for WSL2. Virtual Machine Platform can be used to create MSIX Application packages for an App-V or MSI.

  • Windows Hypervisor Platform - "Enables virtualization software to run on the Windows hypervisor" and at one time was required for Docker on Windows. The Hypervisor platform is an API that third-party developers can use in order to use Hyper-V. Oracle VirtualBox, Docker, and QEMU are examples of these projects.

The Windows Hypervisor Platform adds an extended user-mode API for third-party virtualization stacks and applications to create and manage partitions at the hypervisor level, configure memory mappings for the partition, and create and control the execution of virtual processors.

Sources:

  • Windows Hypervisor Platform

  • MSIX documentation

  • Why can't VirtualBox or VMware run with Hyper-V enabled on Windows 10