What is Hyper-V?

Hyper-V is virtual machine software published by Microsoft. Users can create and manage virtual machines that operate in isolated execution environments, with the primary purpose being to run multiple operating systems on one computer.

Key features of Hyper-V include 64-bit native hypervisor-based virtualization, the ability to run both 32-bit and 64-bit virtual machines at the same time, the ability to create virtual machine snapshots to revert to at any time and VLAN support. Applications on the host server can be run on guest computers without a local installation. As of 2014, Hyper-V is freely available as a download from Microsoft's website.