Hyper-V
Hyper-V, codenamed Viridian and formerly known as Windows Server Virtualization, is a native hypervisor; it can create virtual machines on x86-64 systems. Starting with Windows 8, Hyper-V supersedes Windows Virtual PC as the hardware virtualization component of the client editions of Windows NT. A server computer running Hyper-V can be configured to expose individual virtual machines to one or more networks.
Hyper-V was first released alongside Windows Server 2008 and has since become a staple of the Windows Server family.
History
A beta version of Hyper-V was shipped with certain x86-64 editions of Windows Server 2008. The finalized version was released on June 26, 2008 and was delivered through Windows Update. Hyper-V has since been released with every version of Windows Server.
Microsoft provides Hyper-V through two channels:
Part of Windows: Hyper-V is an optional component of Windows Server 2008 and later. It is also available in x64 SKUs of Pro and Enterprise editions of Windows 8, Windows 8.1 and Windows 10.