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
So now let me explain how you monetize this, and how Microsoft makes this a big win for everyone involved.
I suspect this change to Azure Stack HCI comes from a threefold goal of pushing people to Azure, Simplifying the development process, and more effectively monetizing Hyper-V.
So here's how you get all of those, and make everyone happy.
Step 1. Restore Hyper-V Server as a Free Platform (You can even put Azure in the name. Azure Hyper-V Server Or Azure Hyper-V Stack or similar) and make it a standalone flagship free product.
Step 2. Remove the Hyper-V role from Windows Server 2022, and deprecate all other versions of Hyper-V.
This makes Hyper-V Server THE definitive way to deploy Hyper-V, so development can be simplified, and EVERYONE benefits from having the reduced attack surface and reduced footprint on the host.
Step 3. Add Storage Spaces Direct to Hyper-V Server. It needs Hyper-converged Storage to be able to replace all versions of Hyper-V.
Step 4. Require a Microsoft/Azure account to install Hyper-V Server. This will rub some people a little bit the wrong way, but it'll be acceptable, so long as we can choose if we want to be able to harden the install so it can't be cloud *managed*
You still need to have people use the account to setup the install though, so Step 5 can work.
Step 5. Here's where Microsoft gets people in their cloud.
Fully integrated simple backups to Azure with the option of live monitoring, so Azure can spin up the backup if the on-site VM goes down.
Hyper-V Server lacks the Hyperconverged Storage Spaces Direct, and Hyper-V in general lacks a cohesive backup solution. So including a live cloud backup out of the box directly to Azure that will be guaranteed easy to setup since they'll already have to have an account will be the best way to get those VMs in the cloud.
Everybody wins here. Hyper-V becomes a separate free product with flagship functionality, simplified development process, and direct links to get VMs in Azure.
You could even alter the base Windows setup that Hyper-V Server uses to ONLY RUN MICROSOFT SIGNED EXECUTABLES. Both for security purposes, and to ensure that Azure remains the primary method of backup.
#2 take take features away from an existing product and there might be some deployments where Hyper-V on fat install makes sense.
You're last point about being MS Signed, it would stop drivers and system utilities from working including RMM, taking away one of the prime reasons to have a windows based hypervisor not a Linux one. Let people use 3rd party backup, but having built in azure backup which only takes a few clicks or a script to set up, the azure account is already set up from activation, and is ready to put the backup into a Azure VM that can spin up within minutes would be a huge leg up on the competitors because of that integration, ease of use and low cost of storage, the only real cost would be if you actually end up spinning up that backup VM.
Also makes for pathways to encourage movement of VMs to Azure by having them be able to be tested locally first before going live
- Agree, but even easier would be allow (single) AzS HCI machines without Azure registration for Free.
- All of that is over complicated to achieve some semblance of balance. See my post about a simple way to solve the problem while driving Azure Stack adoption.... make HV Server a "free tier" in Azure Stack with basic HV functionality, with Stack bells and whistles reserved for licensed systems.
Best of both worlds and keeps it super simple. It drives Azure Stack adoption, keeps the lab folks and small fish happy, it also provides a direct upgrade path to Azure since the VM's are already in Azure Stack ecosystem. - That's what I meant though. Drivers already have to be signed by Microsoft at least by default on all 64 bit systems. So those would continue to work.
But I just meant to extend that so vendors have to get their approval for the free/locked down Hyper-V OS.
I recognize it's not necessarily a good thing for us admins, but it gives Microsoft the reassurance that people wouldn't use their Free OS in place of a server, while also providing a large measure of security, since it would presumably be very difficult to get malware approved by MS.
