How many VMs are available on Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise?

Question

Dear Microsoft.

My question is how many VMs can you own when using the Hyper-V feature in Windows® 10?

Currently I have Windows 10 Pro and Enterprise both.

When Hyper-V is enabled on Windows 10 Pro or Enterprise edition, what is the maximum number of VMs that can be activated?

Thanks.

Answer 1

How many can you "own"? That depends on how many licenses you've purchased.

A single retail license of Windows 10 Pro provides you with one license. If you use it to install on your physical computer, that's it. You need to purchase another Windows 10 Pro license for each VM.

If you have Software Assurance or E3/E5 licenses, in certain cases you may be entitled to licenses for your VMs, ex: an "active Windows 10 Enterprise with Software Assurance or Windows 10 Enterprise E3/E5 subscription, which permits running up to four virtual machines concurrently."

https://download.microsoft.com/download/9/8/d/98d6a56c-4d79-40f4-8462-da3ecba2dc2c/licensing_windows_desktop_os_for_virtual_machines.pdf

Answer 2

Hi @PAA YEE

I believe that the limit is the same as on a server: 1024, but not sure, so I decided to do a little test to figure it out, so I made this little PowerShell script to test it om my Windows 10 Pro:

clear
$Name = ""

for ($num = 1 ; $num -le 1025 ; $num++)
{
    $name = "Testserver $num"
    Write-Host $Name
    New-VM -Name $Name -MemoryStartupBytes 512MB -BootDevice VHD -Generation 2 
}

The result was that I was able to create 1025 VM's plus the 6 VM's I already had, so it does not look like there is a limit, but I am not sure that I am able to turn them all on at once :-)

One thing is the VM limit, another thing you need to consider is CPU, Memory, Disk and of cause licensing of the VM's.

I hope this was helpful.

Best regards

Thomas

https://www.techthatworks.net/