Oracle Unbreakable Linux installation fails on Hyper-V Generation 2 Virtual Machine

Have you been attempting (and failing) to install Oracle Unbreakable Linux as a Virtual Machine under Hyper-V and cannot figure out what is wrong?

If you are receiving the following message:

Boot Failed. EFI SCSI Device.
Boot Failed. EFI SCSI Device.
Boot Failed. EFI SCSI Device. Failed Secure Boot Verification.
PXE Network Boot using IPv4
......
PXE-E18: Server response timeout.
Boot Failed. EFI Network.
No Operating System was Loaded.
Press a key to retry the boot sequence...

Then I bet you are using a Hyper-V generation 2 VM?
When I first saw the error message it is quite clear that something is not working properly with the boot sequence and my first thought was that either my install media was corrupt or that there was an incompatibility between the Oracle Linux boot media and Hyper-V generation 2 virtual machines (the error message gives a big clue on this).

Immediately I tried installing to a generation 1 VM and it ran through smoothly without incident (proving media was fine), so I returned back to my generation 2 VM to resolve the issue. Returning back to the error message, the Failed Secure Boot Verification warning stands out like a sore thumb, and Hyper-V afficionados will recognise that secure boot was actually introduced by generation 2 VMs. Thankfully it is very easy to turn this off and disable secure boot through the System Center/ Firmware option within Virtual Machine Properties pages (or via Hyper-V Manager/ Settings/ Firmware option). Alternatively we can also do this through PowerShell as follows:

Set-VMFirmware –VMName "VMname" -EnableSecureBoot Off

The next time the machine boots, the installer should automatically launch (and if it isn’t clear already, you must leave secure boot disabled post install).

For more information on this subject see Oracle Linux virtual machines on Hyper-V and visit What’s New in Hyper-V for Windows Server 2012 R2 for and in-depth discussion of Hyper-V new features in Windows 2012 R2.