Nobody knows what Microsoft wants to do, they have Acquired Nokia but nothing goes well.
I'm not sure why you're trying to do that.
Windows 7 cannot run Hyper-V. You can install the Hyper-V Manager on Windows 7, but that only requires Pro or Ultimate. [1]
Client Hyper-V was only added in Windows 8, and you only need Pro. [2]
[1] https://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/f0f1dc3d-9...
[2] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/b8/2011/09/07/bringing-hype...
Oh. Then I agree with you that Microsoft screwed up the licensing -- but it's a different screw-up.
Windows 7 Ultimate is just like Windows 7 Enterprise, except for the virtualization rights. With Enterprise, each license allows 4 concurrent VMs. With Ultimate, you only get one.
The original idea of Ultimate was to be a consumer version of Enterprise. You didn't have to go through a salesman. You could just buy Ultimate on Newegg or Amazon.
However, Microsoft crippled Ultimate by putting in the 1-VM restriction. Considering how much Ultimate cost, this was a really cheap move on Microsoft's part.
Might it be easier to just get an OS-level subscription to MSDN ? I got one of those a few years ago for rsync.net and it was quick and easy to purchase ... and then we had everything.
Certainly more expensive to get MSDN than a single OS license, but it's not that expensive ...
MS Partner on the other hand is licensed for internal-only production use.
Oh, right.
Yes, we just used it to test clients against rsync.net.
Recommended (MSDN, that is), if you're in that situation...
And perhaps Microsoft shareholders are beginning to feel as if they might be losing their capital soonish... This sounds like The End.
This is the sort of thing that helped kill Sun, although the circumstances were sufficiently different it wouldn't play out in the same way: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11601146 (especially when much of the competition is entirely free, e.g. AWS doesn't run on Windows).
Same thing with Xerox not all that long ago, they had a near death experience because the salesmen got so much pointless process larded into what they had to do to do their jobs. Note also one of the newer HP CEOs who upon getting his job said that one of his top priorities was streamlining the sales process.
At some point, the hyperbole starts looking like a plausible assessment.
Eventually I got some person at a Microsoft Store felt bad about the whole thing and took 2 days to get a number for a rep a CDW who could get me the price. That rep didn't have the price, but took my information after a 15 minute call and promised to get it to me. When she did days later, she couldn't give me a final price because she forgot I needed a user CAL and a remote access CAL. When I went to make the final purchase, she said oh, actually we can't do it because Microsoft won't sell the Windows 7 license anymore only Windows 10.
The whole process made me feel like I was losing my mind.