Forum Discussion
Hyper-V Server 2022
Free 'Microsoft Hyper-V Server' product update
Since its introduction over a decade ago in Windows Server 2008, Hyper-V technology has been, and continues to be, the foundation of Microsoft’s hypervisor platform. Hyper-V is a strategic technology for Microsoft. Microsoft continues to invest heavily in Hyper-V for a variety of scenarios such as virtualization, security, containers, gaming, and more. Hyper-V is used in Azure, Azure Local, Windows Server, Windows Client, and Xbox among others.
Starting with Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2019, the free ‘Microsoft Hyper-V Server’ product has been deprecated and is the final version of that product. Hyper-V Server 2019 is a free product available for download from the Microsoft Evaluation Center: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-hyper-v-server-2019
Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2019 will continue to be supported under its lifecycle policy until January 2029, see this link for additional information: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/lifecycle/products/hyperv-server-2019.
While Microsoft has made a business decision to no longer offer the free 'Microsoft Hyper-V Server' product, this has no impact to the many other products which include the Hyper-V feature and capabilities. This change has no impact to any customers who use Windows Server or Azure Local.
For customers looking to do test or evaluation of the Hyper-V feature, Azure Local includes a 60-day free trial and can be downloaded here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-local/ . Windows Server offers a free 180-day evaluation which can be downloaded from the Evaluation Center here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter
Microsoft remains committed to meeting customers where they are and delivering innovation for on-premises virtualization and bringing unique hybrid capabilities like no other can combined with the power of Azure Arc. We are announcing that Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2019 was the last version of the free download product and that customers begin transitioning to one of the several other products which include Hyper-V or consider Azure.
Thank you,
Elden Christensen
Principal Group PM Manager
Windows Server Development Team
Download Windows Server 2022 and install the Core Edition on a physical machine.
Then add the Hyper-V feature from PowerScript.
You now have a Hyper-V Hypervisor.
(I could post commands if needed)
Yes it's not free as before, but won't you buy at least a one Windows Server 2022 Standard License ?
I also setup a AWS bare metal instance,
installed Windows Server 2022 Core,
remote via RDP and then added the Hyper-V feature
I created a test VM and also took a backup of it:
You can check our video here: https://youtu.be/-mvIZZiBkuk?t=5
It's a Windows Server 2022 Datacenter Core with Hyper-V.
In other words a typical Hypervisor Hyper-V.
We have developed a free community backup software for Hyper-V 2012 and later that runs on the Hyper-V itself, offering a GUI to manage backups.
But I will repeat one: One of our customers run Hyper-V Server 2019 and regularly swaps various licensed VMs on it. While licensing allows them run the 3rd virtual host only instance of the licensed Servers, installed as you described, it certainly wouldn't pass audit if caught mismatched, i.e. the guests version and key not matching the host(s). Hyper-V Server 2019 alleviated that concern significantly for them.