When installing Windows Server 2012, it matters if you have the retail version of Windows Server 2012 setup media or the volume license version. The retail version of Windows Server 2012 requires a product key to proceed. The volume license edition does not require a product key at installation time.

There are a few new features available in Windows Server 2012 Hyper-V, the most interesting are:

  • Hyper-V Virtual Machine (VM) Replication, a new disaster recover (DR) mechanism for VMs.
  • Virtual SAN Manager and the ability to deploy virtual fiber channel adapters to VMs.
  • New virtual hard drive (VHD) format ".vhdx" offers superior performance, capacity, and reliability over Hyper-V VHDs in Windows Server 2008.
  • Ability to Live Migrate VMs between hosts that are not in a cluster and have no shared storage.

Once you have verified and you are sure that the target computer system has all the prerequisites in place, and it meets the minimum hardware requirements, here is how you can install the Hyper-V role on the Windows Server 2012 standalone computer or Active Directory domain controller:

  1. Log on to the computer with the Administrator account (in case of standalone server) or Enterprise Admin or Domain Admin account (in case of Active Directory domain controller).
  2. If not already started, initialize the Server Manager window by clicking its icon from the bottom left corner of the screen.
  3. On the opened Server Manager window, from the top right corner, go to the Manage menu from the menu bar.
  4. From the displayed list, click the Add Roles and Features option.
  5. On the opened Add Roles and Features Wizard box, on the Before you begin window, click Next to proceed to the next step.
  6. On the Select installation type window, make sure that the Role-based or feature-based installation radio button is selected.
  7. Click Next to proceed to the next step.
  8. On the Select destination server window, make sure that the Select a server from the server pool radio button is selected.
  9. Also make sure that the target server (this server) is selected in the Server Pool list.
  10. Click Next to continue.
  11. On the Select server roles window, check the Hyper-V checkbox, and on the displayed box, click the Add Features button to add the additional features that are essential for the Hyper-V role.
  12. Back on the Select server roles window, click Next to proceed.
  13. On the Select features window, leave the default settings intact and click Next.
  14. On the Hyper-V window, read the information carefully and click Next.
  15. On the Create Virtual Switches window, check the checkbox representing the active Ethernet card in the Network adapters list.
  16. Click Next to continue to the next step.
  17. On the Virtual Machine Migration window, leave everything default for now and click Next.
  18. On the Default Stores window, click the Browse button to change the default virtual hard disk and Hyper-V configuration files’ locations. (You can leave the default settings intact for the testing purposes, like it is in this demonstration.)
  19. On the Confirm installation selections window, check the Restart the destination server automatically if required checkbox.
  20. Finally click Install to begin the Hyper-V role installation process on the Windows Server 2012 server.
  21. Once the installation process completes, and the system restarts, you can start creating the Hyper-V virtual machines on the server.


Note: It is important to store the virtual hard disk files to any location other than C:\ in order to prevent the system drive from getting overpopulated and over consumed, which may further result in decreased Windows Server 2012 performance.

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