Does the free Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 have the same Hyper-V role features found in Windows Server 2012?

Why using Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 might make sense for you--even though it's a free, standalone hypervisor, it still can do a lot of what Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V does.

John Savill

October 27, 2012

1 Min Read
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A: Yes. The free, standalone Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 has all the features of the Hyper-V role found in Windows Server 2012 including the new scalability, Shared Nothing Live Migration, virtual fibre channel, live storage move, RemoteFX, failover clustering, and more. It can also be managed by System Center 2012 and Windows 8 Remote Server Administration Tools (RSAT).

It doesn't contain other Windows Server roles, which makes sense as it's a free hypervisor. Because it doesn't have other roles and is running in Server Core configuration level, its disk footprint is very small.

What you don't get with Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 are any guest virtual instance rights for server OSs (you get two with Windows Server 2012 Standard and an unlimited number with Windows Server 2012 Datacenter). This is why  Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2012 is great for Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI) deployments or for hosting non-Windows server OSs such as Linux where the included server virtual instance rights in Windows Server aren't required.

It's available from the Microsoft Server and Cloud Platform webpage

 

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