Windows Server

Post 19 built an automation practice around PowerShell , modules, DSC v3, CI/CD pipelines. For many organizations, that’s enough. PowerShell is native, it’s free, it covers 100% of Hyper-V functionality, and your Windows team already knows it.

But some organizations have standardized on Ansible for configuration management across Linux and Windows. Others use Terraform for all infrastructure provisioning. And some want both , Terraform for creating resources, Ansible for configuring them. The question isn’t “which tool is best” , it’s “which tool fits your team, your existing investments, and your Hyper-V use case.”

“PowerShell Returned to Its Throne” isn’t just a series tagline. It’s the architectural reality.

Every post in this series has used PowerShell for configuration, validation, and management. But there’s a difference between running scripts manually and building an automation practice. If you’re honest with yourself, most of us do the same thing: write a script, run it, tweak something, run it again, save it in a folder called “scripts-final-v3-FINAL,” and hope we remember the parameters next quarter.

This series advocates for on-premises Hyper-V with three-tier SAN architecture. But intellectual honesty , and the credibility of everything we’ve written , demands that we evaluate every option fairly. Storage Spaces Direct and Azure Local have legitimate use cases. Three-tier isn’t always the right answer.

The cost lens matters, though. For many organizations leaving VMware, the decision is not just about technical elegance. It is about whether Azure Local’s host fee and potential hardware refresh are justified, or whether reusing existing compute and existing SAN is the smarter move for the workloads they actually run.

“But what about all the cloud stuff Azure Local gets?”

It’s the first objection every decision-maker raises when you propose traditional Hyper-V over Azure Local. Azure Local comes with AKS, Azure Virtual Desktop, Azure Portal VM management, Azure Monitor, Azure Update Manager, Defender for Cloud , all integrated. How do you compete with that on standalone Hyper-V?

The answer: you don’t need Azure Local to get most of those services. Azure Arc brings much of the same Azure management plane to your existing Hyper-V infrastructure , selectively, incrementally, and without taking on the Azure Local platform fee just to reach the Azure control plane. You pick the services that add value. You skip the ones that don’t. You keep control over where the monthly bill starts.

Why Choose Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) with Hyper‑V Over VMware

Virtualization is a cornerstone of modern IT infrastructure, and VMware vSphere has long been a leader in this space. However, Microsoft’s Windows Server Failover Clustering (WSFC) with Hyper‑V offers a compelling alternative for organizations seeking a cost-effective, high-performance virtualization platform. In this post, targeted at IT professionals, we’ll explore why WSFC with Hyper‑V is a strong alternative to VMware – emphasizing the ability to leverage existing hardware (reducing new hardware costs), the performance benefits of Hyper‑V, available management tools, feature comparisons with VMware, and a look at licensing and cost differences.

Early this year I had written a blog talking about how to enable Windows Terminal on Windows Server. However, I deleted that blog and all content and can’t find my backups so I am re-writing it once again. I wanted to share my experience with installing Windows Terminal on Windows Server and what I had to do to get around the blockers I ran into. As I mentioned in the last blog I had ran into issues that other bloggers never seemed to run into when installing Windows Terminal.