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
When you speak of "reassigning" a license, is anything required to be "physically" done? Or do we just effectively say "right, this Server 2022 license is now assigned to these VMs rather than these", and then run them for 90 days, at which point we could fail back. In other words, how does formally assign a license?
Hi AdamB2395,
Going to have to stop replying to messages soon as it'll probably wind up everyone else subscribed to this thread (and I'm not an expert in Microsoft licensing, check with a reseller) but as far as I am aware, yes, you just 'say' that is what you are doing. I guess this is where it would be a good idea to formally document that decision so that you could demonstrate you had taken the product terms into account if you had a Microsoft auditor come knocking.
So yes, if you failed over, I guess you could formally make that declaration. But bear in mind:
- You can't fail over from the primary server for the first 90 days after installing the product unless the primary server suffered permanent hardware failure or loss.
- You need to fail over all of the VMs on a given server to the backup server; the licenses are assigned to the physical server in its entirety, not the VMs itself, and you can't split them between two servers.
- Unless the backup server suffered permanent hardware failure or loss you would be ineligible to move services back to the original server for 90 days.
- If the primary or backup server had an intermittent or temporary hardware failure and failed back before 90 days had passed (which could happen automatically under some replication scenarios), you'd be in breach. I would investigate to see if you can disable any automatic failover functionality so that you know failover is always a manual process.
- All of this presumes you are using retail or volume licenses. OEM licenses of the kind you purchase 'with' hardware can't be reassigned between servers.
I'm not paid to give you advice though, if you've got further questions probably best to ask a Microsoft reseller who is paid to get it right!
- Hi Chris,
That is helpful and quite clear. I think talking to a reseller would still be a smart move, but at least for me, the whole 90 day reassignment is probably livable. I was concerned that I would be in breech in simply having a backup, but based on what you've said, I don't think that would be the case.
Thanks again.