In order to manage remote Hyper-V hosts using Hyper-V Manager, remote management must be enabled on both the local computer and remote host.

You can do this through Server Manager | Remote management, as shown in the following screenshot:

You can also do it by running the following PowerShell command as Administrator:

Enable-PSRemoting

Make sure the Hyper-V Platform role is enabled, as described in the Verifying Hyper-V requirements recipe in Chapter 1, Installing and Managing Hyper-V in Full, Server Core and Nano Server, to see if Hyper-V is supported.

To save some time and unnecessary complications, make sure the two computers have their network configurations, such as IP address, computer name, and so on, already set. The following firewall rules must also be enabled on the remote Hyper-V host to be managed:

When connecting remotely, the current user account you are using should match a Hyper-V administrator account on the remote host in order to connect successfully. However, connecting as another user is supported in Windows Server 2016. We will get into that in a bit.

The following steps will walk you through the details to connect to a remote Hyper-V host using Hyper-V Manager:

As mentioned previously, you can connect to a remote Windows 10 or later host using either the host name or IP address. Hyper-V Manager now supports alternate user credentials as well. This is only available when connecting to a Windows 10, Windows Server 2016 or later remote host.

In Windows 10 or Server 2016, if you are not running with the correct user account for the remote host, you can connect as another user with alternative credentials.

To specify credentials for the remote Hyper-V host, select Connect as another user: in the Select Computer dialog box, then select Set User..., as shown in the following screenshot:

Sometimes it's easier to connect using IP Address rather than host name. Windows 10 and Server 2016 allows you to do that by entering the IP Address into the Another Computer text field:

To manage another Hyper-V host in a workgroup environment or in a different domain, you need to run the following commandlets as an administrator on the Hyper-V host to be managed:

On the management machine from which you want to connect, run the following commands as Administrator:

As mentioned previously, Microsoft added two Hyper-V PowerShell modules in Windows 10 and Server 2016 and separated them into two versions, V1.1 and V2.0, so you can manage cross-version Hyper-V hosts.

If you want to manage down-level hosts and Server 2016, you need to have a separate PowerShell session. In other words, every time you want to manage Server 2012 R2 or below, you want to remove the default PowerShell module V2.0 and load PowerShell module V1.1, as shown in the following screenshot.

Alternatively, you can open two PowerShell windows and load the desired version:

If you noticed, we have 232 commandlets in Version 2.0 and 178 commandlets in the older Version 1.1.

I definitely agree that this is a pain today; hopefully things will change in the near future.

Hyper-V Manager in Windows Server 2016 has been updated to communicate with remote Hyper-V hosts using WinRM and the WS-MAN protocol instead of the WMI V2 namespace, which permits CredSSP, Kerberos, or NTLM authentication. The WS-MAN-based infrastructure also makes it easier to enable a host for remote management. WS-MAN connects over port 80, which is opened by default.

When the client and the server that you want to manage remotely are members of the same domain environment, the process is much simpler. The only things that you need to do are configure the firewall, install Hyper-V Management Tools from the client or server you want to use to connect, open Hyper-V Manager, and connect to the server using an account that is a member of the Hyper-V Administrators group on the destination Hyper-V server.

However, in the case of non-domain-joined computers and workgroup environments, a couple of other settings must be configured on the remote Hyper-V host to be managed. The first thing to be done is to enable PowerShell Remoting, which will create the necessary firewall rules for private network zones. To allow this access on public zones, you will need to enable the firewall rules for CredSSP and WinRM as well. After that, you want to allow the hosts to be trusted and managed. Finally, you need to enable WS-Man CredSSP.

Most of the configurations we have looked at used Hyper-V UI and PowerShell commands, so you can use the same process for all the Hyper-V versions, such as the free Hyper-V Server, Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V with Desktop Experience, Core installation, and Nano Server.

Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016 greatly expanded the possible combinations of remote connection types to manage cross-version Hyper-V hosts.

When you enable Hyper-V on Windows 10 and Windows Server 2016, all the bits and binaries for the Hyper-V Manager UI will be installed automatically under C:Program FilesHyper-V, as shown in the following screenshot:

The folder named 6.2 is for Windows Server 2012, the 6.3 folder is for Windows Server 2012 R2. and the remaining bits are for Windows Server 2016, so if you have multiple servers registered in the Hyper-V Manager console and each one is running a different version of Hyper-V, when you click on the server, the correct bits will load automatically to match that exact version. This is a great way to explore all the changes that have been made in the UI over the years. For instance, if you install Windows 10 or the Windows Server 2016 UI and connect to Windows Server 2012, you will notice that Checkpoints are called Snapshots, because Microsoft did not change any of the snap-ins.

You can also connect to a remote Windows 10 or later Hyper-V host using either the host name or IP address.

Hyper-V Manager now supports alternative user credentials as well, so you can choose a different user that is a member of the Hyper-V Administrator group on the remote host, and connect.