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I have been looking for a "layman" version of the license for the Free Hyper-V 2012, and more precisely, what services you are allowed to run on the host.

The OS itself does not prevent you from installing a variety of applications and services, but I wonder how legal this is.

You can install 3rd party virtualization managers or servers (anything based on http.sys will run f.i, and so will 3rd party FTP or mail server). For that matter you can even install alternative desktop shells, explorers, browsers and utilities etc. so the OS itself does not prevent installation of any 3rd party software, only the OS components are missing.

My particular purpose would be to know if the license allows to use the Free Hyper-V 2012 as a "bare-metal" OS for hosting simple web services (based on http.sys or raw sockets rather than IIS), that would otherwise require a full Windows 2012 server. Virtualization functions would not even be used.

Eric Grange
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    I suspect trying to be "clever" with the license could end up biting you, badly, if Microsoft wanted to play "hardball". Microsoft employs a lot of lawyers-- I'm sure the end-user license agreement gives them more than enough leeway to make any argument they want to. – Evan Anderson Nov 10 '14 at 15:11
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    I don't recall the exact language of the Hyper-V Server license, but you can install any software directly related to managing the server (config management, backup, virtualization management, etc) so long as that software is used only for the purposes of managing the server. So if your particular 3rd Party Virt Management software requires a 3rd Party shell, that *should* be acceptable, so long as you're only using that software for managing the server. – Chris S Nov 10 '14 at 15:21

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