As I was perusing some forums recently, I ran across a question from a user that wanted to continue to run Windows Server 2008 R2 and install Hyper-V 3 to this older version of Windows. Apparently, his organization is hesitant to move to Windows Server 2012 due to the changes in the interface and their lack of training in the new OS. However, for everything that Hyper-V 3 brings to the virtualization world, there are only two ways to run it:
- Install the Hyper-V role to a Windows Server 2012 server.
- Install a brand new Hyper-V 2012 server.
There is no way to run Hyper-V on Windows Server 2008, but the opposite works just fine. Instead, this user may consider running the standalone Hyper-V Server 2012 and port his Windows 2008 systems as virtual machines to the new hypervisor.