I am attempting to install the android emulator MEMU, onto a Windows Server 2019 instance running on Google Cloud Platform. Whenever I try to launch the emulator, the launcher is stopped at 59%. I did some research and found that I need to have Intel's virtualization technology enabled. However, it looks like the only way to enable the VT-X is to go into the BIOS and do it. Since I'm connected to the machine through remote desktop, that's not possible. From this post: Running Bluestacks on AWS or Google cloud, the person who answered the question seemed to be able to use MEMU. Additionally, I tried enabling Hyper-V, which allowed the emulator to reach 99%. Any help figuring out how to run MEMU on google cloud platform is appreciated.
Have a look at the system requirements of MEmu:
- x86/x86_64 Processor (Intel or AMD CPU)
- WinXP SP3 / Win7 / Win8 / Win8.1 / Win10
- Windows DirectX 11 / Graphic driver with OpenGL 2.0
- Hardware Virtualization Technology (Intel VT-x/AMD-V) shall be enabled in BIOS
- Minimum 2GB of system memory
- Minimum 2GB of hard disk free space
and
It’s not recommended to run MEmu App Player in another virtual machine software.
As it was mentioned by @Morrison Chang, you're not able to use nested virtualization with Windows VMs, more details you can find in the documentation Enabling Nested Virtualization for VM Instances:
Nested virtualization adds support for Intel VT-x processor virtualization instructions to Compute Engine VMs. Using nested virtualization, you start a VM instance as normal on Compute Engine and then install a KVM-compatible hypervisor on the VM instance so you can run another VM instance on top of that hypervisor. You can use nested virtualization on any Linux VM instance running on a Haswell or newer platform. For other constraints, see the sub-section, restrictions for nested virtualization.
and
Windows VMs do not support nested virtualization; that is, host VMs must run a Linux OS. However, nested VMs can run certain Windows OSes (described below).
To solve your issue you can file a feature request at Google Issue Tracker under this component and ask for VT-x support for Windows VMs.
Also, as a possible workaround, you can check Google Cloud Marketplace and search for available android emulators, but they could be non-free.
UPDATE
Topics like Running Bluestacks on AWS or Google cloud at Stack Overflow or other unofficial resources shouldn't be treated as proof of undocumented features, functions or workarounds. As I can see, @Artem Ibragimov tried AWS and GCE and it was fruitless, also @CodeGuru didn't provide any information on which cloud platform he succeeded:
Bluestack doesn't work for me too. I saw Cognosys but they are running on Windows Server 2012 which is really old.
Try Memu Play 2GB Ram Minimum (Try the 4GB VPS) Windows Server 2019 Base DirectX
It works for me