back to article Microsoft sinks standalone Hyper-V Server, wants you using Azure Stack HCI for VM-wrangling

Microsoft won't ship a new version of Hyper-V Server – the free tool it offers alongside Windows Server to build hybrid clouds and manage fleets of virtual machines – with Windows Server 2022. News of the change emerged in a TechCommunity thread. It spread quickly in a newsletter that backup vendor Veeam sends to its forum …

  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hyper-V role still available

    You will still be able to install the Hyper-V role on Windows Server 2022. Free Hyper-V server was only completely free if you don't run Windows workloads. You still needed to license the server to run Windows VMs on Hyper-V server.

    If you have licensed the server for Windows VMs, then you can run a Windows server with Hyper-V role on the metal for no extra cost. A Windows Server core install with the Hyper-V role is basically the same as Hyper-V server.

    1. diodesign (Written by Reg staff) Silver badge

      Hyper-V role

      Yeah, sure. If you can create and use the role, great: you can run some VMs on a Windows Server. That functionality's still there.

      But as we understand it, Hyper-V Server might be useful to you if you want to manage and build a hybrid cloud. And Microsoft wants to steer people onto Azure Stack HCI instead for that.

      As the Microsoft manager said in the linked thread, "Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2019 is that product's last version and will continue to be supported under its lifecycle policy until January 2029. This will give customers many years to plan and transition to Azure Stack HCI."

      C.

      1. thondwe

        Re: Hyper-V role

        Hyper-V server broke for me a couple of iterations ago (driver support for ancient "lab" hardware disappeared", so switched to Windows Server core. But since Windows server has a lot of Software Defined this/that/other functionality, I'm not surprised the freebee is going. Use case as a loss-leader isn't really relevant any more (Cloud first) and niche use for for home/lab/SMB isn't a big base either?

      2. DougMac

        Re: Hyper-V role

        Not too surprised about pushing Azure Stack HCl.

        Hyper-V is one of those things that in the wild as I see it, people run a couple VMs onprem per server and no more.

        To get the full virtualzation stack with System Center Virtual Machine Manager takes a sisyphean task of even finding the product, weeding it out from all the other System Center things, licensing, and figuring out how to actually get it running (no small feat).

        I've _never_ seen any biz running SC VMM in the wild as a full stack virtualization solution.

        I've also never seen anybody that realized there was a free Hyper-V Server product, because anybody that is looking at Hyper-V is looking at doing Windows VMs, and they'd rather pick up the 2 VE license that Windows Standard has.

      3. Archaon
        FAIL

        Re: Hyper-V role

        Yes, Microsoft want you to run Azure Stack HCI for hybrid cloud. In other words you have consistent platform and billing between Azure and on-premises. Azure Stack HCI removes the up-front licensing cost in exchange for the *ahem* 'gift' of monthly billing.

        For on-premises deployments (or where you've got a few services in the cloud but not a true hybrid cloud) then literally nothing has changed. You buy your Windows Server Standard/Datacenter licence(s) and crack on like you have for the last X numbers of years.

        The only thing that's actually changed is that they've killed the FREE version of Hyper-V, which very few people actually use because the use cases for it are limited, and almost all Windows houses can run Hyper-V as part of their server licensing anyway.

        Sure the change is definitely news worthy but your the article makes it sound like Microsoft are bringing the apocalypse.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Hyper-V role still available

      Its not the same though. If you have a Windows Server license it typically licenses two VMs. Using that license on bare metal that is no longer that case and you'd be £700 worse off - so you're in fact incurring more cost.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hyper-V role still available

        NOTE: Azure Stack HCL pricing is in addition to all underlying licensing costs for on prem. You don't get free anything. Assuming it would even run on the tired old nags in my rack, the fact the the per core costs are almost as much as the hardware is worth leaves me a little non-plused. I'd love a better management option then the hot mess of the existing windows tools, or the decade stale vmware platform.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Hyper-V role still available

          I know that open source/Unixy equivalents require different skills, but I do like that there is no need to talk to a salesperson or understand a complex licence agreement, ever. And if I use a cloud service the pricing is usually just simple and consumption-based, and if I want to buy in expertise I can get a consultancy to help me.

          I feel much more in control when it's open source.

          1. ChipsforBreakfast

            Re: Hyper-V role still available

            Perhaps Veeam might like to look at expanding the number of hypervisors they support given the all-but-certain demise of Hyper-V in many SME's after this announcement.

            'Hybrid cloud' AKA 'line Microsoft's pockets' is of no interest to the vast majority of our customers - those who want to go cloud have, those who don't/can't won't be railroaded into it.

            If I'm going to have to pay for a host OS/Hypervisor than I may as well pay VMware & get a better product for my money. Free, there's KVM, XCP-NG & more (proxmox is interesting if sometimes a little flaky still).

            1. PM.

              Re: Hyper-V role still available

              +1 for Proxmox

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Hyper-V role still available

        If you buy standard licensing, you can run 2 vms. You can run a server instance on the metal as a hyperv host at no additional cost as long as it isn't doing anything else.

  2. oldtaku Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Working as intended

    Any confusion in the naming and licensing is entirely deliberate. It's a standard technique for shitty enterprisey crap to confuse you to where you don't even know what you're buying or what you even need to buy and just sign something to make the problem go away.

    It's something Oracle and IBM have used forever and it's sad to see Hyper-V go that way. But like the article said, not being assholes wasn't winning them enough market share. So now it's time to be enterprisey.

    1. ecofeco Silver badge

      Re: Working as intended

      I can remember when dinosaurs roamed the earth that the whole point of PCs was to rid ourselves of the tyranny of timeshare on the mainframe.

      And now everyone has rushed right back to the ball and chain.

  3. Pascal Monett Silver badge

    "Microsoft has made its position clear"

    Microsoft's position has always been clear : it wants all your IT to be Microsoft.

  4. 1752

    Storm in a teacup

    Let me write a press release for MS to clear this confusion.

    "We can't be arsed to build a stand-alone Hyper-V core server anymore as anyways hardly anyone downloads it"

  5. Franco Bronze badge

    Honestly I just see this as removing a product that never got much use, I've never seen it in the wild personally.

    Yes, it was free but as mentioned above there was no license for the virtual OS, whereas if you buy a copy of Windows Server you can get the same functionality and a couple of licenses to virtualise the same OS. The licensing has alwats been Hyper-V's advantage over VMware IF you run a 100% Microsoft shop, these days most of the features are there in both. VMware is easier to manage IME, but the support (again IME) is getting worse and worse.

    Hyper-V isn't going anywhere, it's even in desktop versions of Windows and I use it quite regularly for testing OS deployments etc.

  6. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The free version of esxi is crippled. Main thing is the backup api doesn't work.

      1. It's just me

        Check out GhettoVCB, a set of open-source scripts that back up the free ESXi fine.

    2. Archaon

      In that case, if you don't need any guest licensing your answer is to just buy a copy of Server 2022 Standard and install the Hyper-V role on that. Of course there's a cost to that but it's not immense for a single licence.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      And it just changed. ESXi is no longer available for free. Hyper-V is dead.

      Proxmox is the answer going forward.

      1. 43300 Silver badge

        Recently had a play with that in a VM. Couldn't get the networking pass-through to work (nested virtualisation a problem, I assume). Haven't got round to working out what the problem is (probably something straightforward!)

        I imported some ISOs and created a couple of VMs, and the basic functionality for a single host mostly appeared straightforward. Clustering is usually where these things get complicated, though!

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