Editing Homelab Hypervisor Choices (section)

= Microsoft =

== Microsoft Windows Server 2019 Hyper-V ==

Microsoft Hyper-V Server is a free product that delivers enterprise-class virtualization for your datacenter and hybrid cloud. Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2019 provides new and enhanced features that can help you deliver the scale and performance needs of your mission-critical workloads.

The Windows hypervisor technology in Microsoft Hyper-V Server 2019 is the same as what's in the Microsoft Hyper-V role on Windows Server 2019. It is a stand-alone product that contains only the Windows hypervisor, a Windows Server driver model, and virtualization components. It provides a simple and reliable virtualization solution to help you improve your server utilization and reduce costs.



===Licensing===

Microsoft Licensing is a dark art that only a select few will take the time to master and to remain compliant within a corporate world it most companies rely on License specialists.  Whilst it is, of course, important to be fully licensed for all of the software you plan to run within the home lab, if you have a TechNet (no longer available) or MSDN subscription then you are more than likely covered (assuming you only deploy the applications and software you are licensed for). See [[Microsoft Licensing|Microsoft Licensing]].

From a Hyper-V perspective, Microsoft Windows Server 2012 (inc R2) Standard Edition license means you can run upto 2 VMs per license.  Any further VMs will require additional Standard License (licensing either the host for virtual instances).  By far the most common scenario for virtualisation in real world environment is to purchase Data Center Edition licensing as this allows you to run unlimited instances of a virtual machine on your host servers.

That said, I believe the Microsoft Server license mode is very much trust based. Microsoft trust you will do the right thing because being caught under licensed is a very expensive mistake to make!