In this chapter so far, you have learnt how to setup a virtual machine. It is time to put it to the use for which you have built it for and install some software. The next thing you will be installing is an operating system on this virtual machine. In the first chapter, we looked at the supported list of operating systems for Windows Server Hyper-V 2012 R2. The list may go stale anytime; however, the shared URL alongside it would be constantly updated by Microsoft as they expand their list to include or exclude certain operating systems.

Before you begin installing an OS you need to understand its prerequisites for hardware requirements and follow-up configuration of virtual hardware, also verify if the OS is enlightened (comes with latest version of integration components) or you need to download the latest integration components or services for it. Thereafter the process of installation of an operating system is no different to the way you would accomplish...