A hidden feature in Windows is the ability to Enable Hyper-V on a Windows 10/11 Operating system. This allows you to build virtual machines and test them without impacting production equipment. This guide will show you how to enable Hyper-V so we can install the latest version of Business Central On-Prem.
Prerequisites
In order to enable Hyper-V on your Windows 10 or 11 device, you will need local administrator rights. If this is a personal machine, you won’t need to worry about this; but if you’re doing this on a work computer, you will most likely need to contact your IT department.
You will also need a copy of Windows Server. You can get a copy of 2019 for evaluation purposes here: https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/evalcenter/evaluate-windows-server-2019
Enabling the Hyper-V Feature
Enabling the Hyper-V Feature is straight forward if you know where to look. Start off by navigating to “Turn Windows Features On or Off”
This will bring up a new window that shows the different Windows Features you can enable and disable. Locate the Hyper-V folder and enable all of the Hyper-V Features:
Once you select “OK”, it takes Windows a few minutes to process:
Once completed, it will prompt you to restart:
Proceed to restart. This will take 5-10 minutes as the Windows Operating System is adjusted to enable all of the Hyper-V Features.
Once the reboot is complete, search for Hyper-V:
Which should then bring up the Hyper-V Console:
At this point, you’re ready to create your virtual machine. Check out Part 2 that shows you how to obtain and install Windows Server 2019:
Installing Windows Server 2019 in Hyper-V