Explore Windows Server 2012

Try Windows Server 2012

Download Windows Server 2012 Trial
Find out how to download Windows Server 2012 for a 180-day trial.

Evaluate Windows Server 2012

Evaluation Resources
Use these resources to help you evaluate Windows Server 2012, including an overview, product guide, and installation information.

Evaluation Versions and Upgrade Options
This document summarizes key information about evaluation versions of Windows Server 2012, including where to obtain them, the limits on their use, and how to convert them to full retail versions. It also summarizes the supported upgrade paths from previously licensed retail versions of Windows Server to Windows Server 2012.

Product Information
Windows Server 2012 delivers hundreds of new features and enhancements spanning virtualization, networking, storage, user experience, cloud computing, and automation.

Editions
Windows Server 2012 delivers a dramatically simplified licensing experience. Shaped by feedback from customers and partners, the new Windows Server licensing approach will help make choosing the right Windows Server easier.

Virtual Labs
Experience Windows Server 2012 firsthand in these virtual labs. Test-drive new and improved features and functionality, including server management and Windows PowerShell, networking, Hyper-V, and new storage solutions.

Technical Documentation
This library provides the core content that IT pros need to evaluate, plan, deploy, manage, troubleshoot, and support servers running Windows Server 2012.

Overview
Windows Server 2012 brings the Microsoft cloud experience to you—from building and operating public clouds to delivering a highly dynamic, available, and cost-effective server platform for the private cloud.

Understand requirements

System Requirements
These are the estimated system requirements for Windows Server 2012.

Windows Server 2012 Evaluation Guide
This evaluation guide is designed to help you understand the design goals, feature set, and implementation for Windows Server 2012.

Learn about features

What's New
Find out what's new and changed in Windows Server 2012, with a focus on the changes that will potentially have the greatest impact on your use of this release.

Learn Windows PowerShell
Learn about the Windows PowerShell command line and scripting environment through training videos, guides, and wiki articles.

Understand and Troubleshoot Guides
These downloadable guides provide overviews, functional descriptions, and additional technical depth and troubleshooting content for Windows Server 2012 features and technologies.

Configure a test environment

Test Lab Guides
Learn how to configure and demonstrate Windows Server 2012 features, technologies, and scenarios in a standardized and simplified test lab environment.

Explore technical scenarios

Investigate the new capabilities in Windows Server 2012 that can help you solve current information technology issues. Use this end-to-end content to evaluate, design, and deploy key scenarios such as:

• Building Your Cloud Infrastructure
  Leverage new network and storage virtualization features combined with improved server virtualization to build your cloud infrastructure.
• Dynamic Access Control
  Learn how you can apply data governance across your file servers to control who can access information and audit who has accessed information.
• Hosting-Friendly Web Server Platform
  Rapid and efficient scaling of your web applications makes for a cloud-ready web platform. Enhanced security, application initialization, NUMA-aware scalability, and the sharing of resources across sites allows for this rapid scaling with minimal management overhead.
• Increasing Server, Storage, and Network Availability
  Find out how new experiences in Windows Server 2012 work together to improve availability, performance, and reliability at the single-server and multiple-server (scale-up and scale-out) levels.
  

See more technical scenarios >