*Customers pay only the cost of Software Assurance. See also visitor comment below.

You may recall me doing a bit of Hyper-V testing and demonstration earlier this year, using the impressively-stable Windows Server 2016 Technical Preview 5 (beta) code. I also tested it as a VMware ESXi 6.0U2 VM and found that the speed, performance, and compatibility was excellent, featuring that vaguely Windows 10 UI. Yes, the good parts of the Windows 10 UI, skipping much of annoyance of the Windows 8-like UI that Windows Server 2012 R2 was saddled with.

May 23, 2017 - Click the link above to download the latest version and activate using your. Windows Server 2012 R2 64-bit; Windows Server 2008 R2 64-bit. Windows server 2012 R2 ISO is released on September 4, 2012. This is the sixth release By Microsoft in the category of Windows server. This version of Windows server is. Sep 21, 2016 - Nope, but you can use the evaluation ISO: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-2012-r2.

The final bits for Windows Server 2016 are now available, and you can try them free for 180 days, even if you don't have MSDN!

Mary Jo recently published two related article that may be interest to IT Pros and virtualization enthusiasts, since Window Server is highly likely to be in the mix at work and in home labs, even if Hyper-V is not the hypervisor they're using today. I personal prefer to try to keep both running in my home lab, to keep up with the latest advancements, and to stay familiar with both UIs and management tools.

I've had the good fortune to meet Mary Jo Foley and Paul Thurrott, and I suspect many of you also listen to their Windows Weekly podcast. Here's Mary Jo's first of two related articles to check out:

Windows Server 2012 R2 Iso Download Links Free

• Windows Server 2016 will be generally available by mid-October. Microsoft's Azure Stack hybrid system is hitting Technical Preview today.
  Sep 26 2016 by Mary Joe Foley at All About Microsoft

It's simple to get that ISO download going, just fill out that basic TechNet form found at this site:

Download Windows Server 2016 Evaluation 2016

• microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-2016
  the file you download will be called:
  14393.0.160715-1616.RS1_RELEASE_SERVER_EVAL_X64FRE_EN-US.ISO

In my home, instead of the usual Akamai CDN for many Microsoft ISO file downloads, I discovered that the bits were coming from Cox Communications IP address 98.171.219.25 this time around. The speed was a decent 30 Mbps (of my 300 Mbps connection), taking about 15 minutes to complete. Your findings will vary.

While that's downloading, now you have some more time to read this second article, more enterprise-focused:

• Microsoft offers free Windows Server 2016 licenses to VMware switchers
  Microsoft is kicking off a nine-month Windows Server 2016 promotion aimed at getting VMware vSphere users to migrate to Hyper-V.
  Aug 25 2016 by Mary Jo Foley at All About Microsoft

Yeah, you're not likely to have software assurance for your home lab, but still, good to be aware of. Microsoft isn't exactly shy about their efforts to go toe-to-toe with VMware, see also:

• Migrate your workloads to Hyper-V and receive free Windows Server Datacenter licenses
  *Customers pay only the cost of Software Assurance.

Windows Server 2012 R2 Essentials Iso Download

Jan 28 2017 Update

Special thanks to jcotton42 for his response under reddit/r/sysadmin:

• Install Windows Server 2016 Hyper-V on a Supermicro SuperServer with built-in Intel RSTe RAID
  Jan 27 2017

This is wrong, you can go to paid using dism: dism /Online /Get-TargetEditions to discover the editions you can upgrade to, then dism /Online /Set-Edition:<edition> /ProductKey:<key> /AcceptEula then reboot
See more here: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/jj574204(v=ws.11).aspx

Somebody out there tested this lately on a Server 2016 evaluatioin? Please drop a response below, so others will know.

See also at TinkerTry

Step-by-step Video

Windows Server 2012 R2 provides a wide range of new and enhanced features and capabilities spanning server virtualization, storage, software-defined networking, server management and automation, web and application platform, access and information protection, virtual desktop infrastructure, and more.

Need more information about Windows Server 2012 R2? See the product details page.

How To Download Windows Server 2012 R2

Benefits

At the heart of Microsoft’s Cloud OS, Windows Server helps customers transform the datacenter, taking advantage of technical advances and new hybrid cloud capabilities to increase resilience, simplify management, reduce cost, and speed delivery of services to the business.

Windows Server 2012 R2 is a proven, enterprise-class cloud and datacenter platform that can scale to run your largest workloads while enabling robust recovery options to protect against service outages. It helps accelerate time to value by simplifying your underlying infrastructure and allowing you to reduce cost by taking advantage of industry-standard hardware. Windows Server 2012 R2 helps you build, deploy and scale applications and web sites quickly, and gives you the flexibility to move workloads between on-premises environments and the cloud. It enables you to provide flexible, remote access to corporate resources while managing identities across your datacenter and federated into the cloud, and it helps you protect critical business information.

Languages

Windows Server 2012 R2 Iso Download Links Windows 7

Chinese (Simplified), English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Russian, Spanish

Editions (April 2014)

• Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter on Microsoft Azure
• Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter 64-bit ISO
• Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter Virtual Lab
• Windows Server 2012 R2 Datacenter 64-bit VHD