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Installing SUSE Linux Micro on Hyper-V

SUSE Linux Micro doesn't install like regular desktop or server OS ; farewell the YaST wizard.

The selfinstall ISO just copies a pre-built image to disk, then runs a first-boot configuration from a labeled block device you provide.

The official documentation was both too long for my usage and too shallow with regards to Hyper-V.

Here's the shortest path from zero to a running SLE Micro on Hyper-V.

Here is the video walkthrough in one take & realtime :

1. Download the base image

Grab the selfinstall ISO from the SUSE Customer Center for the supported flavor or openSUSE MicroOS downloads page. This is the installer that copies the pre-built image onto your target disk.

2. Generate your Ignition config

Head to Fuel Ignition 🚀 and fill in the form : hostname, network (static or DHCP), user accounts, SSH keys, services to enable.

At the bottom of the page you can download the result as fuel-ignition.img, a raw disk image already labeled ignition, which is exactly what SLE Micro's first-boot process looks for.

3. Prepare the Hyper-V VM with the minimum requirements

Create a Generation 2 VM with :

  • Secure Boot: disabled
  • 1 GB RAM, 2+ vCPUs
  • 20 GB+ VHDX
  • SLE Micro selfinstall ISO mounted on the DVD drive

4. Convert fuel-ignition.img to VHDX

Hyper-V's DVD drive won't accept raw .img files, so wrap it in a VHDX container :

qemu-img convert -f raw -O vhdx fuel-ignition.img fuel-ignition.vhdx

On Windows, qemu-img is available via :

  • winget : winget install -e --id cloudbase.qemu-img
  • Chocolatey : choco install qemu-img
  • Or as a standalone build

Then attach fuel-ignition.vhdx as a second hard drive on the VM's SCSI controller. The first-boot process scans all block devices for the ignition label.

The label is the magic

Ignition (and Combustion) don't care about the device type, filename, or path : they scan every attached block device for a filesystem labeled ignition or combustion. That's why Fuel Ignition ships the config as a pre-labeled raw image, and why converting it to VHDX preserves the behavior : the label lives on the filesystem inside, not on the container.

5. Boot and install

  1. Boot the VM → select Install SL Micro
  2. Confirm the target disk : the image gets copied over
  3. System reboots via kexec
  4. Select SL Micro at the next boot menu
  5. Ignition finds your config disk and applies it automatically : no JeOS Firstboot wizard

6. Verify

Once first boot completes, SSH in with the user/key you defined in Fuel Ignition and check :

cat /etc/os-release
hostnamectl
ip addr
transactional-update --help

Then shut down, detach both the installer ISO and the config VHDX, and boot clean from the VHDX.

Hyper-V VM settings showing detached installer ISO and config VHDX before clean boot

Next steps

You now have a running, immutable SLE Micro VM on Hyper-V, provisioned entirely from config files. The same approach scales from a single test VM to a fleet of edge devices.

  • Register the system : transactional-update register -r CODE -e EMAIL && reboot
  • Install packages the immutable way : transactional-update pkg install <pkg> && reboot
  • For fleet deployments, the same Ignition/Combustion config drives everything from a single VM to thousands of edge devices.