Download and Install Windows Server 2022 GA

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Well it is finally official. After months of waiting and using the Preview
release of Windows Server 2022, the final GA bits have arrived. Windows Server
2022 represents the latest and greatest operating system from Microsoft with
the most robust hybrid cloud feature set available for both on-premises and in
the cloud. The following post is a quick overview of how to download and
install Windows Server 2022 GA in your lab or production environment.

Download Windows Server 2022 GA

For the Windows Server 2022 download, there are a few ways that you can get
access to the bits. What are those?
* The Microsoft Evaluation Center
* Visual Studio Subscription
* Purchase the SKU
Let’s take a look at how to get your hands on the Windows Server 2022 ISO by
using the Microsoft Evaluation Center. The Evaluation Center provides access
to the full Windows Server operating system for a period of 180 days. This is
a great time period for evaluating, especially in a home lab environment.
Navigate to the Microsoft Evaluation Center for Windows Server 2022 here:
* Try Windows Server 2022 on Microsoft Evaluation Center
The great thing about the Evaluation Center is it gives you many different
choices on how to evaluate Windows Server 2022. This includes the
following:
* Try Windows Server on Azure
* Create a Windows Server VM in Azure
* Download the ISO
* Download the VHD
Downloading the Windows Server
2022 evaluation copy from Microsoft Evaluation Center
Of course, depending on your use case and the environment in which you want to
install Windows Server 2022, this will determine what you download. For my
purposes having a VMware vSphere 7.0 U2-powered home lab, I downloaded the ISO
of the Windows Server 2022 installation. With the ISO, you can do many things,
including:
* Using the raw ISO file to mount to a VM and install
* “Burning” the ISO to a USB key or optical media (does anyone even do that now?)
* Using the ISO called in your automation pipeline to build out your VM using Terraform, etc
Installing Windows
Server 2022 in vSphere 7.0 Update 2

Install Windows Server 2022 GA

Now that you have the ISO, let’s look at the various ways that you can install
Windows Server 2022 GA in your environment. There are, of course, the manual
ways to install Windows Server 2022 in your environment. As mentioned above,
you can simply use the ISO or VHD files to spin up a Windows Server 2022
instance in your lab or production environment.
However, I want to spend the time talking about installing based on
automation. Do yourself a favor and learn automation in your spare time. You
don’t have to be completely proficient at coding or other skills and you will
see a quick time to value for your efforts.
Spend just a few minutes each day learning a bit of Packer, Terraform,
PowerShell, and a few other tools and technologies. Using these, you can
completely automate your Windows Server 2022 installation.

Using Packer to build Windows Server 2022 GA templates

As I have already covered many of the core topics regarding using Packer to
deploy both Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 2022.
Packer allows you to have an automated “build and capture” approach to keeping
your Windows Server 2022 and other operating system templates up-to-date. You
can schedule your Packer build to happen periodically to pull down the latest
updates, etc. You will see in the link I have above, how you can use a GitLab
pipeline to perform your builds.
Windows
Server 2022 GA installed using a Packer build and a cloned vSphere template

Use MDT to install Windows Server 2022 GA

The Microsoft Deployment Toolkit (MDT) also works well to automate your
Windows Server 2022 GA installs. MDT is a great fit for organizations already
using it for other operating systems and those who prefer a more GUI-ized
approach to automation.
The MDT interface Deployment Workbench allows easily importing the operating
system image and then creating what is known as “task sequences” to automate
the deployment of the operating system.
Importing the Windows Server 2022
operating system into MDT
Using the MDT approach you can “build and capture” using the LiteTouch boot
disk included with the MDT deployment tools. When you run the build and
capture MDT essentially installs the operating system, syspreps the
installation image and then powers down the build machine after saving off the
.wim image.
You can also use MDT in conjunction with Windows Deployment Services.

Wrapping Up

Hopefully you find some of the information presented in this Download and
Install Windows Server 2022 GA post beneficial. Look for more posts soon on
various Windows Server 2022 deployments and other tidbits. Let the upgrading
of the home lab Windows Server environments begin!

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