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[Update] Nested virtualization is now supported in Amazon WorkSpaces Personal
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Shibata here.
The other day, while working with Amazon WorkSpaces Personal, I noticed that "nested virtualization" had been added to the settings of each WorkSpace.
Today, AWS officially announced support for nested virtualization in Amazon WorkSpaces Personal, so in this article I will be verifying this feature.
Update Details
As mentioned above, nested virtualization is now supported in Amazon WorkSpaces Personal (and Amazon WorkSpaces Core).
As of today, it is available in all regions that support Amazon WorkSpaces Personal[1], and there is no additional charge for using nested virtualization.
The specific requirements are summarized in the following documentation.
According to this, nested virtualization is available in WorkSpace environments that meet the following conditions.
- License model
- Public (AWS-provided) bundles
- Bring Your Own License (BYOL)
- Bring Your Own Protocol (BYOP)
- OS
- Windows Server 2019
- Windows Server 2022
- Windows Server 2025
- Windows 11 (BYOL only)
- Ubuntu 22.04 or later
- Red Hat Enterprise Linux 8 or later
- Rocky 8 or later
- Protocol
- DCV (WSP)
- Bring Your Own Protocol (BYOP)
- Bundle size
- Non-GPU bundles of Value or higher
To put it simply, it can generally be used with relatively recent operating systems.
PCoIP protocol environments are not supported, but since the deprecation of PCoIP protocol has already been officially announced, this should not be a problem.
AWS recommends using bundles with 4 or more vCPUs (Power or higher).
It can also be used with 2 vCPU bundles (Standard and Performance).
As a limitation, enabling nested virtualization on AutoStop mode Windows Server 2025 (and Windows 11) WorkSpaces will disable hibernation (resulting in a restart rather than a resume).
Also, while not limited to Amazon WorkSpaces, nested virtualization on Windows environments has licensing restrictions, so please be aware of those as well.
Tried It Out
From here, I will actually try it out.
I prepared one Amazon WorkSpaces environment in the Tokyo region of my AWS account for testing.
When creating a test WorkSpace through the wizard, I found that "Nested Virtualization" was available as an option during customization.
Checking "Enable nested virtualization" displays the following notes.
Since this is the same content as mentioned above, it is worth reading through once more.
We recommend testing and validating your workloads with nested virtualization enabled to ensure they meet your performance requirements. Nested virtualization is recommended for bundles with 4 or more vCPUs. For the best experience, consider upgrading to Power or higher.
AutoStop WorkSpaces using Windows Server 2025 or Windows 11 do not support hibernation when nested virtualization is enabled. Stopping will result in a restart rather than a resume, and unsaved work will be lost. Save your work before ending the session, or switch to AlwaysOn to avoid this limitation.
Here is what the created WorkSpace looks like.
This time I used the Performance bundle with Japanese Windows Server 2025.
You can see that "Nested Virtualization" has been added to the details section.
I logged into this WorkSpace and verified whether WSL2, which requires nested virtualization, could be installed.
# Install WSL2
wsl --install
Traditionally this would result in an error, but this time the installation completed successfully without any errors.
Checking the WSL environment version confirms it is properly set to 2.
Looks great.
Disabling and Re-enabling Nested Virtualization
Changes to nested virtualization for existing environments can be made from the "Actions" menu.
Select the target WorkSpace and choose "Disable nested virtualization" from the Actions menu to disable it.
A confirmation dialog appears, so enter the required text in the confirmation field and click the "Disable" button to confirm.
The configuration change takes a little time, and once complete, it is successfully disabled.
Conversely, to enable it, select "Enable nested virtualization" from the Actions menu.
A confirmation dialog also appears here, but it displays more cautionary notes than when disabling.
Enter the required text in the confirmation field and click the "Enable" button to confirm.
In the case of enabling, it took quite a long time for the configuration change to complete.
Changing the Compute Type
Changing the compute type seems to work without any issues.
(Due to the 6-hour limit, I was unable to verify the actual behavior...)
Side Note: WorkSpace Instance Types Have Been Updated + Expanded Nested Virtualization Support on EC2
As mentioned in a previous article, initially nested virtualization on EC2 was only supported on 8th generation instance types (C8i, M8i, R8i).
From my recollection, each bundle in WorkSpaces Personal used T3-series instances internally, so I wondered "has the instance type changed now that nested virtualization is supported?" and decided to check.
Instance metadata is accessible within the WorkSpace environment, so I was able to check the instance type from there.
As a result, I found that the Performance bundle uses m7i-flex.large.
(When I tested the Standard bundle beforehand, it was c8i-flex.large)
# Performance bundle is m7i-flex.large
PS D:\> Invoke-RestMethod http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-type
m7i-flex.large
# Standard bundle is c8i-flex.large
PS D:\> Invoke-RestMethod http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-type
c8i-flex.large
# Side note: Value bundle remains t3.small
PS D:\> Invoke-RestMethod http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/instance-type
t3.small
As a result, it turned out that the instances have been updated to 7th and 8th generation instances.
I also re-checked the EC2 documentation and found:
Supported instance types – Nested virtualization is currently supported on C8i, M8i, R8i, C8id, R8id, M8id, C8i-flex, R8i-flex, M8i-flex, X8i, C7i, R7i, M7i, C7i-flex, M7i-flex, and I7i instances.
This showed that the range of instance types supporting nested virtualization has also expanded significantly.
Closing
That's all.
I had been waiting for this ever since nested virtualization was supported on EC2, so this is a very welcome update. Being able to use WSL2 in particular is fantastic.
I think this is great news for those using Amazon WorkSpaces Personal for development purposes.
China and Tel Aviv are excluded ↩︎
