In terms of tools, Hyper-V uses a Windows server virtualization feature called Enlightened I/O. Enlightened I/O is the performance tweak analogous to hardware-assisted virtualization integration used in VMware and XenServer. Enlightened I/O is a virtualization technique that is aware of high-level protocols that can access the VMBus directly, bypassing any device emulation layer. This requires that the hypervisor and virtual machine be aware of each other so that the virtual machine can take advantage of accessing the VMbus directly.
Microsoft does provide similar performance-enhancing ability through what they call Enlightened I/O. The Enlightened I/O and the Hyper-V-aware kernel are turned on by installing the Hyper-V Integration Service. Hyper-V and the root / child partition architecture require a processor that includes HAV, which is provided with Intel VT and AMD-V technologies. Hyper-V takes advantage of the processor hardware-assisted virtualization available from Intel...