Hyper-V is Microsoft’s hardware virtualization technology, built directly into Windows. Microsoft’s documentation describes it as “Microsoft’s enterprise-grade hypervisor technology built into Windows Server and Windows” that “provides hardware virtualization capabilities that enable organizations to create, manage, and run virtual machines at scale.”
Unlike hosted virtualizers, Hyper-V sits beneath the operating system. The documentation states that “as a type-1 hypervisor, Hyper-V runs directly on computing hardware, delivering near-native performance and robust isolation for virtualized workloads.” When Hyper-V is enabled, even the main Windows installation effectively becomes a privileged guest running on top of the hypervisor.
Hyper-V supports a broad mix of guests. Microsoft notes that “it supports a wide range of operating systems for guest virtual machines, including many versions of Windows, Linux, and FreeBSD,” which lets organizations consolidate diverse workloads onto shared hardware.
First shipped with Windows Server in 2008 and later included in desktop editions of Windows, Hyper-V became the virtualization foundation Microsoft built on at scale. The documentation describes it as “a key component of Azure Local,” and the same hypervisor family underpins Microsoft’s Azure cloud, making Hyper-V the bridge between on-premises virtualization and Microsoft’s hyperscale data centers.