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
"You can consider Windows 11 and Hyper-V if you do not need much VM."
This would only apply if only you would need access, you had a sufficiently powerful local machine, and you weren't running on server hardware. In many cases, using a client version of Windows as the host really isn't suitable.
"The point is that's only for Linux workloads. For Windows Server licensing apply and so could favour Windows Server or Azure Stack HCI as a platform depending your licensing and needs. "
Plus manage with WAC your comment assumes your VMs are Linux only otherwise you have had to license Windows Server on Hardware anyway."
Not necessarily. I can think of three scenarios where Hyper-V server was useful:
- Linux (as you say) - and the same would apply to any other non-Microsoft OSs
- Client versions of Windows, either standalone or as part of a VDI setup. M365 E3 and above subscriptions allow running of W10/11 Enterprise in a VM
- Testing - Windows Server has a grace period before activation, and this is useful for short-term, non-production testing. E.g. you might want to create a VM to test some new GPOs before applying them to live systems, and the test VM could be created, the testing done and the VM deleted again within a few days and without it ever being activated
But we are where we are, and Microsoft is clearly not going to back down on this. VMWare is also not an option now. I've been doing some testing with Proxmox, as I'm sure others have too.
DavidYorkshire thanks for sharing your usecases.
Linux only.
Agreed Windows Server makes no sense. Windows Client is a good option.
It is not less stable or needs more updates. Same core OS, same Hyper-V. Eventually some special features missing like GPU pooling, now with Windows Server 2025.
VDI
Windows Client as a host might work if there is nothing in licensing terms that does not allow it.
Testing
Both Windows Client and Windows Server are best fit with github mslab which offer easy and near automated lab deployments. Try this with Proxmox. You cannot due lack of PowerShell Host to VM communication.
Hardware
Windows Client OS will work with Server hardware. You can put your RAID Controller into Bypass Mode and use Storage Spaces instead. Best with Windows Enterprise (needs Qualified OS + Enterprise addon or M365) With Windows 11 Enterprise you can leverage ReFS which is superb with storage Spaces and performance. The the only thing missing compared to Server is dedup and compression.
If you used Windows Server 2019 Hyper-V SKU with SAN, well not that good with Windows Client. It can use iSCSI though.
I don't want to appear stubborn, but seriously changing platform, I see no benefits, except higher complexity. Am I happy about Hyper-V SKU gone? Nope.
As soon you are hosting Windows Server VM this change does not affect anyone. It's an unfortunate side effect.