Windows Server on ARM64 (Insider Previews)

[Steskalj]

When will there be a preview build of Windows Server on ARM? There is demand for it from developers, and devops personal as well. It is known that it already partial exists due to the article on Azure Host OS.

Azure Host OS – Cloud Host - Microsoft Community Hub

Please release this so we can test it against our code.

[#2]

Hi Steskalj, Thanks for your interest in Windows Server on Arm. We are evaluating this opportunity so your feedback helps. Please feel free to share the scenarios that you want to run as that would help our planning.

[#3]

I am looking to run this on low wattage endpoints in manufacturing facilities where ARM would be beneficial. Also, I would want to use this in our future high density private cloud infrastructure. We are looking at ARM based servers since we can run a large amount of them in a smaller footprint.

[#4]

I volunteer to test this out, as Windows Server on ARM is a very important step towards making the Windows on ARM developer experience complete, which it can't be without local virtual machine labs. While Windows 11 on ARM can run within Hyper-V on ARM, the real deal is *Windows Server* for Active Directory and all the Windows Server roles (RD Session Host, RD Gateway, AD CS, IIS, SQL Server, you name it, it has to be Windows Server, not Windows Client).

I've noticed Windows Server ARM64 *updates* are apparently available in UUP, but the base images are missing, so it's not possible to reconstruct ISOs using common UUP media creation tools.

My primary goal is to port my collection of PowerShell scripts that leverage Hyper-V + PSDirect to build a local lab of VMs in Hyper-V for testing with Remote Desktop Manager: https://github.com/Devolutions/devolutions-labs

WinNAT is still missing on WoA, but it's being worked on. If we could have Windows Server on ARM images as an Insider Preview, I could at least port the script that creates a golden Windows Server image and start using it on my Windows Dev Kit, which has sufficient resources to run this lab.

And before someone suggests running labs in Azure - that's a different use case, one which costs a lot more than paying for electricity and network on a 800$ dev kit with 32GB of RAM and 512GB SSD. cloud-based labs are a complement, not a replacement, of local labs.

[#5]

@Steskalj Thanks for sharing your usecase.

[#6]

Thanks @Marc-Andre for sharing your requirement and interest in Windows Server on Arm. That helps in our evaluation of Windows Server on Arm opportunity. However, its early for us to share any timeline for release of preview for developer community.