Introduction to Hyper-V on Windows 10/Windows server 2016/Windows Server 2019

Hyper-V has been around since the release of Windows server 2008. It is the answer to the virtualisation products from VMware, a reputed company in virtualisation technologies. There are several benefits of using Hyper-V over VMware's products and we are taking a deep dive into what they are, basic things and settings about Hyper-V, and finally how to create a Windows 10 Virtual machine using Hyper-V.

Before we start let's get a basic understanding of what is virtualisation. Virtualisation is a technology which lets the users to run virtual environments on a physical computer using it's resources. Virtualisation software scans the hardware configuration of the computer it's installed and makes them available to be consumed to virtual machines. It acts as a software on the host machine and acts as the hardware layer to virtual machines. There are several virtualisation software products available on the market but only two of them are best in their game. One is Hyper-V the Microsoft's take on virtualisation which we are going to talk about in here and the other one is VMware's product stack.

So what is Hyper-V?

As I said earlier in the introduction Hyper-V is the Microsoft's take on virtualisation. When you decide to install hyper-v on Windows you have to enable it as a feature of Windows. (This will be discussed later on a future article). Unlike VMware's product stack, you get Hyper-V free when you purchase Windows. Hyper-V first came to the market with the release of Windows server 2008. Since then Microsoft has made numerous changes and  improvements to the product.  Microsoft decided to make the Hyper-V available in client version of their operating system with the release of Windows 8.

Where can we find Hyper-V? 

Hyper-V is a free feature included in Microsoft Windows operating System. You can install it if you are running Windows 8,8.1/10 or Windows server 2012/2012R2, Windows Server 2016/2019. Also in addition to this you can find the free Hyper-V server edition if you head to Microsoft Evaluation centre. This is actually a Windows-core edition which installs Hyper-V automatically when installing itself on the host computer. After the installation you will need Remote server administration tools such as Server Manager,Power Shell and Hyper-V Manager to control the server.

What are benefits of using Hyper-V over Vmware products

There are several benefits to choosing Hyper-V over Vmware products.

1.It's Free

If you own Windows server/Windows 8,8.1 or 10 you already got the Hyper-V. You do not need to purchase it separately. After Windows installation, you just have to enable the feature through add or remove programs wizard on client OSs or Server Manager if you are running server OS. If you need GUI less version of Hyper-V you can always download and install Hyper-V server 2019/2016. It's free and contains full features of the product without any limitations.

2.It's cost effective.

Aside bring free, Hyper-v is cost effective in another way if you are using Windows in your cooperate infrastructure. All Windows server VMs can be activated for free if they are running on Hyper-V. If your Hyper-V server is running on Windows Server 2012/2016/2019 Datacenter edition, you can activate any VM running Windows server OS using Automatic Virtual Machine Activation (AVMA). It's a built in feature of Hyper-v which is very useful for reducing costs. Also some companies are jumping ship from VMware to Hyper-v because of this feature alone. Said server standard version is capable of activating two Windows VMs.

3.Easy to understand/manage

Interface of Hyper-V manager is pretty easy to understand, contains lots of explanatory descriptions and contains a fluid beautiful UI. Even a newbie to Hyper-V can learn things pretty easily to manage VMS using this console without any issues without any guidance. Also if you are a veteran and like getting your hand dirty, you can always user Windwos-PowerShell to manage Hyper-V functions. This is highly effective when you need to deploy multiple VMS at once or change configuration changes across Hyper-V fail-over clusters.

4. Reliable

Hyper-V is a very reliable platform when it comes to virtualisation. Windows Server OS offer many protection technologies like Shielded-VM, Fail-Over Clustering etc, VM Migrations, Rolling Cluster Upgrades etc. These technologies can ensure that your infrastructure is available in case of a hardware failure. Also you can backup your VMs to Azure, Microsoft's cloud solution for additional reliability and Disaster-Recovery options.

Conclusion

If we look at the facts so far Hyper-V is one of the most superior platforms for virtualisation. Since it's free, if you already own Windows server license it will be best for you and your company to move to move to Hyper-V. 

Also this article series is not over. In the next one i'll show you how to create a virtual machine with Hyper-V and provide a brief description about each component in the feature.