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
MicrosoftThanks!
Elden
With the creation of Windows Admin Center, for a moment it looked like Microsoft was finally getting serious about competing with VMWare, then this happens. How disappointing.
Time to start looking for alternatives, XCP-NG and Proxmox are looking better and better. May even revisit ESXi.
Just like me, I'm sure this is will push many MSP, enthusiasts, and nascent IT professional into the welcoming arms of any of those products. Good bye, and thanks for all the fish.
Same, XCP-ng backup looks impressive, certainly more so than anything Hyper-V has to offer.
We just finished the upgrade cycle for our own systems, and clients. That will give us plenty of time to test the system and train staff for the next one.
I've always wanted to get serious with the platform, this decision by Microsoft is without question the push I needed to convince myself this is the way to go forward.
chroust The problem (and fear) I posed to Elden (MS HV team) is that they will realize the mistake in doing this only long after we've all started the process of migrating to other platforms. If they are going to reverse course on this, it would be wise to do so soon. This kind of bell will be very hard to un-ring once the masses get moving on migrating to other platforms, not to mention any new systems folks will be rolling out which will start their life as XCP or vmware.
I already tasked one of my engineers with getting a lab environment with XCP-ng on it so we can start this whole decision making process on which platform we will replace HV with.
Hi All,
I fully agree with imschmidt and @BrianMartin.
We're facing complete upgrade of our infra from 2012R2 next year. If there is no hyper-v 2022 SKU, we'll probably move fully to VMWare. Azure Stack HCI is completely useless to us! The same goes for our clients. But all has already been said above.
This decision was made by someone who has never heard about SMB clients and their scenarios or is just after Azure money and doesn't care at all about the customers and MSPs.
PS: Did you even consider the homelabs? There are 1000s of Microsoft professionals with home lab enviroments for testing and LEARNING new stuff. And it was already said, homelab "must" always run "the latest and greatest" stuff. So what now? Take a vmware/xcp/proxmox path or wait if MS will make hyper-v 2022 SKU available the same way as 2019?
