Few days back, Microsoft released Windows Server 2022 under Long Term Servicing Channel (LTSC). This new release of Server OS includes advanced multi-layer security, hybrid capabilities with Azure, and a flexible platform to modernize applications with containers. We’ve already shared the guide to show you how to download Windows Server 2022 on your system. Now in this guide, we will compare Windows Server 2022 editions.

How to download Windows Server 2022

Windows Server 2022 has three standard editions. They’re namely Standard, Datacenter, and Datacenter: Azure Edition. You must be already aware of former two editions. But with Windows Server 2022, we’ve a new edition and that is Datacenter: Azure Edition. According to Microsoft, Windows Server Azure Edition is a special version of Windows Server built specifically to run either as an Azure IaaS VM in Azure or as a VM on an Azure Stack HCI cluster. Unlike the traditional Standard or Datacenter editions, you can’t install Azure Edition on bare metal hardware, run it under client or Windows Server Hyper-V, or run it on third party hypervisors or within 3rd party Clouds.

Now let us see how a Windows Server 2022 edition differs from another.

Compare Windows Server 2022 editions

Here’s a quick comparison for the three Windows Server 2022 editions.

Features available generally Windows Server 2022 Standard Windows Server 2022 Datacenter Windows Server 2022 Datacenter: Azure Edition
Azure Extended Network No No Yes
Best Practices Analyzer Yes Yes Yes
Containers Yes Yes Yes
Direct Access Yes Yes Yes
Dynamic Memory (in virtualization) Yes Yes Yes
Hot Add/Replace RAM Yes Yes Yes
Hotpatching No No Yes
Microsoft Management Console Yes Yes Yes
Minimal Server Interface Yes Yes Yes
Network Load Balancing Yes Yes Yes
Windows PowerShell Yes Yes Yes
Server Core installation option Yes Yes Yes
Server Manager Yes Yes Yes
SMB Direct and SMB over RDMA Yes Yes Yes (not supported in Azure)
SMB over QUIC No No Yes
Software-defined Networking No Yes Yes
Storage Migration Service Yes Yes Yes
Storage Replica Yes, (1 partnership and 1 resource group with a single 2TB volume) Yes, unlimited Yes, unlimited
Storage Spaces Yes Yes Yes
Storage Spaces Direct No Yes Yes
Volume Activation Services Yes Yes Yes
VSS (Volume Shadow Copy Service) integration Yes Yes Yes
Windows Server Update Services Yes Yes Yes
Windows System Resource Manager Yes Yes Yes
Server license logging Yes Yes Yes
Inherited activation As guest if hosted on Datacenter Can be a host or a guest Can be a host or a guest
Work Folders Yes Yes Yes

Above mentioned comparison has been provided by Microsoft. You can checkout this detailed documentation for more information.

That’s it!

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