Any chance to see preview builds of Hyper-V Server?

[Jan Ringoš]

Great to see LTSC builds flighting again. We've already started some small-scale preliminary testing, and all is going great so far.

But as I have also plain Hyper-V Server deployed here and there, it would be nice to try that one too. It doesn't need to follow weekly cadence. Not at all. Just when there are some substantial changes to networking merged. That'll be more than enough.

[#2]

Hi Jan,

We historically haven't released insiders previews of the Hyper-V Server SKU.  I recommend also checking out the Azure Stack HCI preview:

https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-stack/hci/hci-download/

Thanks!
Elden

[#3]

I think I saw a few preview builds of Hyper-V Server some time around builds ~17700, but I might be remembering it wrong. NVM, it's just my personal affinity for this type of things.

The Azure Stack HCI SKU is new to me. Thank you for pointing it out. It seems super interesting, especially as both I, and we as a company, were somewhat vary of cloud deployment, at least until recently.

I'll try it out today. 

[#4]

@Elden Christensen 

Quick follow up and questions, if I may:

I've found some old VM and ISO backups and there actually were previews for Hyper-V Server. The ISOs were named Windows_InsiderPreview_ServerHypercore_17692.iso (till 17744).

The Azure Stack HCI is very interesting, but the preview available is based on build 17784, which isn't exactly recent. Would you know when/whether newer ones will be available?

Also Hyper-V Server licensing has important restriction, where it forbids from running production software (other than management tools) directly on the host. I haven't been able to find anything detailing this regarding Azure Stack HCI. Would you know where I can find this info?

[#5]

Hi Jan,

Azure Stack HCI, version 20H2 is based on the Windows Server 2019 code base with a few new features... hence it's build number and it is the most recent.  The Windows Server Insider builds are pre-release builds for future major versions. 

Both Hyper-V Server and AzS HCI are based on server core, and both are purpose built OS's for being a virtualization host.  AzS HCI includes all the software-defined infrastructure features for a hyperconverged deployment (in addition to just compute, also networking and storage).

AzS HCI is a subscription model with deep hybrid integration.

Thanks!
Elden