Microsoft releases Windows 11 Enterprise virtual machine for developers
These VMs will expire on 9 January 2022, the company says
Without making any formal announcement, Microsoft has released evaluation virtual machines (VMs) based on Windows 11 Enterprise that developers can install and use on their systems.
Last week, the company updated a page in the Windows Dev Center to include download links for Windows 11 VMs for four different virtualisation software options: Hyper-V, VMWare, VirtualBox and Parallels.
Although the page has now been updated to include links for Windows 11 VMs, its title remains the same - 'Get a Windows 10 development environment' - referring to the Windows 10 version of the OS.
Microsoft suggests on the page that developers can 'start building Windows applications quickly by using a virtual machine with the latest versions of Windows, the developer tools, SDKs, and samples ready to go'.
Microsoft said its evaluation VMs include the following:
- Windows 11 Enterprise (evaluation)
- Windows 10 SDK, version 2004 (10.0.19041.0)
- Visual Studio 2019 (latest as of 10/09/21) with the .NET desktop, UWP, and Azure workflows enabled; it also includes the Windows Template Studio extension
- Windows Subsystem for Linux enabled with Ubuntu installed
- Visual Studio Code (latest as of 10/09/21)
- Developer mode enabled
- Windows Terminal installed
On the page, users can see four separate VM options available for download, with each weighing around 20 GB.
Microsoft said these VMs will expire on 9th January 2022, although the company may decide to extend the date in coming days.
Microsoft defines virtualisation as the 'process of creating a software-based (virtual) version of a computer, with dedicated amounts of CPU, memory and storage that are 'borrowed' from a physical host computer- such as your personal computer- and/or a remote server- such as a server in a cloud provider's data centre'.
The VM is partitioned from the rest of the system, meaning that its software cannot interfere with the host computer's primary OS.
Running a VM is a good way to use an OS without installing it on your PC. It enables users to simulate a PC and run it in a window at the top of their main OS.
VMs are also used to:
- build and deploy apps to the cloud
- spinning up a new environment to make it simpler and quicker for developers to run dev-test scenarios
- backing up existing OS
- accessing virus-infected data or running an old application by installing an older OS
- running apps or software on OS that they were not originally intended for
However, not any computer can run a VM, and users need to see if their PC's processor can handle a VM before moving forward.