With QEMU 10.2 that released at the end of last year is the new “MSHV” accelerator for allowing VMs to be created from a Microsoft Hyper-V guest without using nested virtualization. Last weekend at FOSDEM 2026 was a presentation on this MSHV accelerator for those interested.
Microsoft has been working on exposing Hyper-V capabilities to users with different virtualization toplogies and this is just the latest effort as part of Linux’s leading presence on their Azure cloud platform. Magnus Kulke as a Microsoft engineer on Azure presented at FOSDEM around the MSHV accelerator and its capabilities.
The presentation covered the capabilities of this MSHV acceleration, different challenges encountered, and of course the future plans. In building off the initial capabilities in QEMU 10.2, Microsoft is looking at QEMU CPU model support, device passthrough capabilities, live migration of VMs, and complementing the x86_64 support with ARM support too.
If MSHV interests you, the FOSDEM 2026 presentation assets on MSHV acceleration in QEMU can be found via this FOSDEM.org page.
