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
How is anyone finding Azure Stack HCI? Am aware that it’s the recommended alternative - but the reviews are awful (and for me, credible as anyone who’s tried to use a new Microsoft product since they moved to Azure first and early releases can testify) - released too early, updates break basic functionality due to a lack of testing, slow, ignorant, terrible support).
https://www.reddit.com/r/AZURE/comments/1cu3mtl/has_anyone_migrated_from_vmware_to_azure_stack_hci/
https://www.reddit.com/r/sysadmin/comments/1auuzmj/azure_stack_hci/
If it wasn’t for the Azure Hybrid Benefit, there’s no reason to move from Windows Server + Hyper-V role for me. Anyone happy with it?
AFAIK only single one was seriously considering "upgrading" from Hyper-V Server 2019 to Azure Stack HCI, and, from what I'm told, the Microsoft reseller representative was laughed out of the building after presenting the quote.
But we are very small ISV so don't consider our experiences to be a representative sample.