Hyper-V Server 2022

Elden_Christensen 
If you guys are still monitoring this thread, I recently thought of a solution that may be of interest to you.

So Hyper-V Server Standalone is officially discontinued, but in the last couple years, Linux kernel patches have been put out to be able to make Linux the root partition for a Hyper-V Installation.

So if Microsoft pushed out the rest of what would be necessary to make an on-premises installation of Hyper-V with a Linux root partition, then I think that would satisfy most everyone here.

You could even package it yourself with the official Microsoft Linux distributions CBL-Mariner and/or CBL-Delridge and call it Hyper-V Server again if you wanted to, but this time, there'd be no Windows components. Just raw Hyper-V and Linux.
I'd say the ability to manage it via Powershell in Linux, and some way to connect to the console of a VM would be all we'd really need for a Linux based Hyper-V solution.

Either way, I'd say the pushing of patches to the Linux Kernel implies that this will happen sooner or later, but doing it sooner, and making it the new direction of Hyper-V Server would probably be more than enough to satisfy us dissidents in this thread.

Hi SpenceFoxtrot,

I'm not sure the Microsoft product terms allow you to do what you're describing, but at the end of the day that's between you and any Microsoft auditors.

The only thing I'd suggest you might consider is that Disaster Recovery Rights under Software Assurance exist for a reason.

Kind regards,

Chris

The hyperV replication not need any licence migration...
You can't start the two mahines at the same time with same copy of OS (aka licence in US, that not exist in France).

It's the same ID, the same system.
A replication is basicaly a save/backup, as a clone.

You can have 10 systems on the first machine, 10 replications on the second, and moving "for all time" 5 machines on the second hypervisor, with not end delay, because you want split performances, and accept a degraded mode when issue comming on 1 hypervisor for exemple.

Just respect "it's the same machine, so I can't run 2 on the same time with the same licence".

Any people in Microsoft blames you if you start for a short time the two mahine, after any crash (in the case where you have launch the replication for continu work after bug of the main system), to migrate some data for any reasons.

But "short moment" is not 10 years...
It's like 1 or 2 weeks maybe, where the initial machine is not use as service (or 2nd)... 1 day in fact in real situation where we xan imagine this scenario.

Or for time to re-migrate at starting point.

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 AdamB2395,

If I understand the product terms correctly, it applies to replication situations within any hypervisor product, if the purpose of the replication is to temporarily run the 'backup' replicated virtual machine in the event of disaster recovery.

In the general Microsoft product terms for all products there is this statement on 'License Assignment and Reassignment':

'Before Customer uses software under a License, it must assign that License to a device or user, as appropriate. Customer may reassign a License  to another device or user, but not less than 90 days since the last reassignment of that same License, unless the reassignment is due to (i) permanent hardware failure or loss... (the other reasons are irrelevant here). Customer must remove the software or block access from the former device or to the former user. '

https://www.microsoft.com/licensing/terms/en-US/product/ForallSoftware/OVOVS

There is nothing against creating a backup of a virtual machine that is never run (after all, that's just normal backup procedure) - but in order to run that backup on a separate piece of hardware, you either need to formally reassign the license to the new product - which involves removing the software or blocking access from the former device - and then you have to bear in mind the rules above that you can't transfer back for another 90 days, unless the reassignment is due to permanent hardware loss - or you could make your life simple and obtain Software Assurance to gain the Disaster Recovery Rights that I mentioned before.

'For each Instance of eligible server software Customer runs in a Physical OSE or Virtual OSE on a Licensed Server, it may temporarily run a backup Instance in a Physical OSE or Virtual OSE on... another one of its Servers dedicated to disaster recovery.'

You could probably imagine a situation where you could 'live with' the license reassignment rights with a limited kind of replication (if your two servers were identical, and you were pretty sure that you would just leave your 'backup' server running in the event of a failover even if you repaired the old one - and it would get more complicated if your backup server itself failed) but it'd get needlessly complicated and it would only seem sensible to use the Disaster Recovery Rights as the cheapest and most sensible way to do what you want.

ChrisAtMaf 

Hi Chris,

Thank you for pointing that out. I wasn't aware of the existence of Software Assurance and will now be looking into that further.

 A follow up question for you: does this only apply to replications made by Hyper-V Server? Or replications made by any software whatsoever?

In other words: is another license or Software Assurance required to have any kind of DR at all, regardless of the software being used to replicate/backup the primary server?

Kind regards. 

In terms of basic licensing costs, having reviewed the issues raised in this thread, in summary there are just a few broad scenarios under which losing access to the dedicated Hyper-V Server SKU is going to have an impact on licensing costs or cause other issues while the option to run Windows Server Core Standard or Datacenter with the Hyper-V role still exists.

1. It will no longer be possible to install or upgrade to a later version of Hyper-V Server on the hypervisor host without paying the upgrade cost for the latest version of Windows Server Standard or Datacenter. So you will no longer be able to run Hyper-V Server 2022 when you only have guest OSE licenses purchased for Windows Server 2019 or below.
2. It will no longer be possible to use Hyper-V Server in situations where none of the guest OSEs are running Windows Server - for example, running all-Linux, or BSD, or other non-Microsoft services, or all Windows client operating systems in VDE deployments.
3. In certain edge cases such as embedded scenarios where it is desirable to set up a hypervisor on servers with small amounts of storage such that disk space is at a absolute premium.

Some of the other scenarios people have raised:

1. Would require additional licensing in order to be properly licensed in the first place (using a 'spare' Hyper-V Server for failing over Windows Guest OSEs, for example).
2. Have an equivalent option under existing Windows Server licensing (using Windows Server Core with the Hyper-V role) with no additional licensing costs.
3. Are not covered under the existing terms for Hyper-V Server anyway (using the Hyper-V Server for purposes other than those permitted in the EULA - i.e. to provide hardware virtualization services and run software to manage and service operating system environments on the licensed server).

It seems that Microsoft need to make Azure Stack HCI more palatable for enthusiasts, SMBs and nonprofits - or they need to work harder to advertise the option of the perpetual 'Windows Server' model for smaller deployments and nonprofits where the current Azure Stack HCI license model is just too expensive to make it worthwhile and they may feel forced to carry out an (in some cases entirely unnecessary) move to an alternative hypervisor.

Hi AdamB2395,

As GlenBarney1 pointed out and you later realised I am not a Microsoft employee and am also unhappy with the change. I would also have to agree with GlenBarney1 that according to my understanding of Microsoft’s licensing terms, your current setup is not sufficiently licensed. However there should be a cheaper way to get yourself licensed other than purchasing Windows Server license(s) for the backup server (even on your current setup) - purchasing Software Assurance for the existing Windows Server license(s) for your primary server. This would also give you ‘Disaster Recover Rights’ which is I think what you want:

‘For each Instance of eligible server software Customer runs in a Physical OSE or Virtual OSE on a Licensed Server, it may temporarily run a backup Instance in a Physical OSE or Virtual OSE on either, another one of its Servers dedicated to disaster recovery, or, for Instances of eligible software other than Windows Server, on Microsoft Azure Services, provided the backup Instance is managed by Azure Site Recovery to Azure. The License Terms for the software and the following limitations apply to Customer’s use of the backup Instance...’

‘Permitted Use of Backup Instances

The backup Instance can run only during the following exception periods:

• For brief periods of disaster recovery testing within one week every 90 days;
• During a disaster, while the production Server being recovered is down; and
• Around the time of a disaster, for a brief period, to assist in the transfer between the primary production server and the disaster recovery Server.’

’Additional Permitted Use of Windows Server

Other than backup instances run on Microsoft Azure Services, Windows Server License is not required for the disaster recovery Server if the following conditions are met:

1. The Hyper-V role within Windows Server is used to replicate Virtual OSEs from the production Server at a primary site to a disaster recovery Server.
2. The disaster recovery Server may be used only to:
   • run hardware virtualization software,
   • such as Hyper-V, provide hardware virtualization services,
   • run software agents to manage the hardware virtualization software,
   • serve as a destination for replication, receive replicated Virtual OSEs, test failover, await failover of the Virtual OSEs, and
   • run disaster recovery workloads as described above.
3. The disaster recovery Server may not be used as a production Server.’

It is worth noting again that I think you need this coverage to do disaster recovery using a replication server even under your existing setup, or if you switch to another hypervisor. You aren’t licensed to fail over and then fail back again in a short period of time to a second server without the second server being covered under this right, or having licenses of its own. So for you the removal of the ‘free’ Hyper-V Server SKU hasn’t  really put you in any of a different situation than you were before.

Hope this helps you plan.

https://www.microsoft.com/licensing/terms/product/SoftwareAssuranceBenefits/all

Elden_Christensen you have unmasked yourself!  Haha!  Now you will never be left alone!!!  Well since you're here let me re-iterate, speaking officially only for myself, but I hope for many here, that despite the bumps over changes, I am grateful for your help and patience in this thread, and for all you and Microsoft are doing to make the IT world a better place for all of us.  You and your team deserve a big thank you, and you certainly have that from me! So THANK YOU!

AdamB2395 You are very welcome.  I hope I could help in some small way.  I hope your future plans work out well and - who knows - as Elden states, Microsoft is listening, so it will be interesting to see what the future brings as well!

Best regards to you both,

Glen

GlenBarney1 

Hi Glen,

Thank you for the reply. I was familiar with the distinction between Activation and Licensing, however, your reply sheds a greater amount of detail on the subject and is thus very helpful; it has satisfactorily answered my questions.

Kind regards.

Hi Adam -

Yes, right after I hit "Post" I saw your edit - all good, of course, I think everyone here, including both Microsoft and myself, just wants to make sure everyone is taken care of as best we can.

To your follow up question: Forgive me if you know all this already, but, for context: Licensing requirements and Activation requirements are not exactly the same thing. Activation is a technical process. If you are doing machine level replication using HyperV or XCPNG, it is likely (depending on how you do it and how your hypervisor works) that replication will preserve the activation status of the source host, so that the destination host will already be activated if and when you fire it up. It is also possible that activation status will be lost, in which case the host will attempt to re-activate when it's fired up - and that will happen automatically if an Internet connection exists. In either case you should generally not have to do anything like applying a new product key to the target server regardless of hypervisor. It should all "just work".

In contrast, licensing is a legal process. You have to have paid for, and own, in some legal way, enough Windows Server/CPU licenses to make all of your machines legal. I suppose that in your case, where you are only running two live machines, and the replication targets are never running and never used and just sitting there waiting for a disaster that we hope never happens - in that case you might not need a second license for those machines since you're not "using" them (as quoted from the document) - but again I am not a lawyer and cannot answer that authoritatively.

But I guess my point was that whether you need a second license or not is not related to the choice of HyperV Server vs any of the other hypervisor options mentioned in the thread, so the loss of HyperV Server won't change your operating costs in any way. Regardless of how many legal licenses you actually need, that number remains the same whether you're on HyperV or ESX or whatever. (The only exception to that of course would be if you upgraded to Datacenter for the physical boxes, in which case you wouldn't need anything else beyond that... other than CALs or whatever, of course.)

In any event, to answer your question, no, whether HyperV, or Datacenter, or XCPNG, you should not need to change anything or do anything if disaster strikes: your backup machines, when brought online, will either already be activated, or will attempt to self-activate online, and either way it should be transparent. Only if your product keys run out of activations will you get a warning; in which case you just call Microsoft's licensing center humans and explain it to them, and they'll fix it for you... often while you wait.

I hope this is helpful!

Glen

GlenBarney1 

Hi Glen,

I realized later that Chris was not an employee, hence the edit. Nonetheless, I wanted to add my voice to the chorus expressing discontent with the decision. There's 7 years before the complete end-of-life of Hyper-V; perhaps I'm a naïve optimist, but perhaps if enough ruckus raised, Microsoft will change their mind.

I wanted to thank you for your detailed response. It is very helpful. I have a follow up question with regard to what you said about the standby VMs on the backup server requiring an additional license; from a practical standpoint, how precisely does that work? The VM is licensed from within the OS, using the Activation menu; is the expectation that if that VM is ever turned on, we would need to change the license to a different one using the same menu (obviously we cannot turn the VM on to license it, nor would that persist even if we did if it is a replica)? If so, and we replicate it back to the primary (as in the case of failed physical server that we repair), would we then need to re-license it again back to the original license?

Kind regards.

AdamB2395 According to his profile, ChrisAtMaf is not a Microsoft Employee (and neither am I) so directing your unhappiness to them is unlikely to directly reach Microsoft.  This thread is pretty much dead, but in an effort to help you out, let me try to summarize what we've learned from Microsoft to date:

1. Hyper-V Server 2019 is still a thing, you can still get it, download it, and use it.  It will be supported for at least 5 years from inception, so at least another year, and even after that it can still be used.

2. Hyper-V Server 2022 is *not* a thing, it's not coming out, it's not going to exist.  Microsoft has made the decision, and made formal announcements, including one from a Microsoft employee Elden_Christensen in this very thread.  That product is gone.  Everyone in this thread and elsewhere has given feedback to Microsoft about this, but this is a decision made, and it's not going to change.

3. Microsoft has introduced Azure Stack HCI (Hyper Converged Infrsatructure - see https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/products/azure-stack/hci/ for details) as a replacement for Hyper-V Server.  It is not free.  It is however relatively inexpensive, at $10 per physical core per month.  It has numerous advantages and is a significant improvement over Hyper-V server, all of which are outlined on the above-linked website.

4. If you do not wish to use, or cannot afford to use, ASHCI, you have alternatives:

* You can buy a perpetual Windows Datacenter Server 2022 (or whatever it becomes) license for each physical box, and run all your virtual machines on there - including as many instances of Windows Server as will fit - all covered under just that one license.  Expensive, yes, but you own it outright and, with proper planning, it will be a very good future setup for you.

-or-

* You can just continue to use Hyper-V Server 2019 - it's not going to die in the future, it just won't be officially supported anymore after 2023.

-or-

* You can use a different Hypervisor.  One such is called XCP-NG ( see https://xcp-ng.org/ ).  It is free.  It is Linux-based.  It has a free GUI called XO (Xen Orchestra, see https://xen-orchestra.com/ ).  It has community support.  And it very nicely runs Linux servers and Windows servers alongside each other as virtual hosts.  

I personally have been using Hyper-V Server 2019 and loving it.  I've also used, and am running some XCP-NG servers.  They're also quite nice.  I have a pair of Windows Servers (one domain controller and one exchange server) running virtualized on an XCP-NG host, and everything works, and works perfectly, just as you'd expect.

I am not a lawyer, but as I review Microsoft's Licensing Guide here:  https://download.microsoft.com/download/E/6/4/E64F72BF-55E9-4D85-9EFE-39605D7CE272/WindowsServer2016-Licensing-Guide.pdf it seems pretty clear to me that "Windows Server Standard edition provides rights to use two Operating System Environments (OSEs) or Hyper-V containers."  The way I read that is:  If your physical machine is running Windows Server Standard Edition, you can run one additional Virtual Standard host.  Or, if your physical machine is NOT running Windows Server Standard Edition, you can use your once license to run two virtualized servers.

Of particular note, Hyper-V Server 2019 is not "special" in any way.  It does not grant or confer any special license or usage rights.  It's a free product, and is just a hypervisor.  So it seems to me that your existing setup (two physical hosts, each running Hyper-V Server on the metal, and then two Windows Standard virtual servers on each Hyper-V server) *already* requires a total of two actual licenses.  One license is consumed by the two servers on your primary box, and another license would be required by the two servers on your secondary box.  Others may correct me, but it seems to me that the fact that your secondary box is some kind of standby/backup machine isn't relevant from a licensing perspective:  You would still need a total of two licenses, each allowing you to run two instances as virtual machines, for a total of four virtual machines.

If in your proposed future scenario you used Windows Datacenter 202X on the physical boxes, you could run anything you want virtualized, without limit.  If you use anything else - an old copy of Hyper-V Server 2019, or XCP-NG, or Azure Stack HCI - you would still need one Windows Standard server license for each pair of virtual machine images (so a total of two licenses for your four images) - and you would not need anything additional to run any number of Linux or any other free OSes on those hosts at the same time.

So all of that to say that, as far as I can tell from the licensing docs, your current situation would not be changed one bit in the future:  To run a total of four Windows Standard 202X boxes plus any number of Linux hosts you would need a total of two Windows Standard 202X licenses, plus some kind of hypervisor host to run on.

In other words, the demise of Hyper-V 2019 doesn't change your situation at all.

Again others here who haven't muted this old thread may provide correction or more insight, but that's how it appears from where I sit, and from the references I've cited above.  

For myself, I'm just waiting to buy a new physical box, and then I'm going to go with Azure Stack HCI.  That's just me - I'm a Microsoft supporter, and prefer to trust their lead on technology development.  I'll still keep an eye on other options (who wouldn't) but I find the new offering compelling (even if not free) and worth checking out.

I hope this information is helpful.

Glen

ChrisAtMaf 

Hi Chris,

I wanted to add my voice and let you know that I strongly dislike the discontinuation of Hyper-V Server. It has been essential in keeping costs to small-business customers down and helped keep us competitive.

I am writing because I want to understand precisely what we would be looking at in terms of licensing and how much more it would cost for us to setup the same environment we currently do for our customers. In most situations, that would be as follows:

- A primary server running Hyper-V Server 2019, with two Windows Server 2019/2022 VMs (licensed with the appropriate Standard license) and another Linux-based VM.

- A secondary server that runs Hyper-V Server 2019; using replication, we replicate from the primary to the secondary.

Given the information from your post, if I wanted to replicate this exact setup using Windows Server 2022 (or whatever it will be in 7 years), is it the case that I would be looking at the following?:

- An additional Windows Server Standard license for the secondary server

- Additional core licenses for the Linux VM 

Additionally, for the replicated VMs that would essentially only be run in DR scenarios, what would they require for licensing?

I want to re-iterate that again, for the sake of simplicity and cost, a free Hyper-V Server is something I strongly support. I have no intention of paying a monthly fee for the Azure stack.

Kind regards.

EDIT: Reading back through some more posts, it would appear you're not a Microsoft employee. Obviously voicing my discontent to you directly achieves nothing, so I'll redirect to to Microsoft generally. If you have an answer regarding the licensing though, that'd be appreciated.

Thank you very much! It looks like I have several options which is great news. You have been very helpful, and it is much appreciated.

thorr2 

If I wanted to use ESXi, can I use that instead of Hyper-V, and run the two VM's with one license?

Yes

I was thinking that 2019 Hyper-V would only be legal for 2019 Server and older VM's.  It's fine with 2022?

No - there are two ways to set up a Hyper-V server:

Hyper-V Server 2019 - this is free for anyone to use for virtualisation. This however is now being discontinued so there will be no Hyper-V Server 2022.

Windows Server 2019/2022/(onwards) with Hyper-V role - You can purchase and install Windows Server with the Hyper-V role as your hypervisor instead. This is still covered and so long as you are only running Hyper-V (no other functionality) on the physical version you can *additionally* have 2 VMs hosted on that server with the Standard Edition (this was my post above). If you install it in the Core version (without GUI) and just the Hyper-V role it will be comparable in size and have a similar

attack surface to the ‘free’ Hyper Server (which is now discontinued).

This article may explains

better if you want more:

https://www.altaro.com/hyper-v/hyper-v-2016-host-mode-gui-core/