If you’re diving into the world of IT administration or just want a safe sandbox to test enterprise features, building a Windows Server virtual machine (VM) is the perfect starting point. Using Oracle VM VirtualBox , you can run a full-scale server environment right on your laptop without messing with your primary OS.

Windows Server 2022 is the current standard, but 2019 and the upcoming 2025 are also popular for labs. 2. Create the Virtual Machine Container Launch VirtualBox and click New to start the wizard: Name: Give it a clear name like Windows_Server_2022_Lab .

Before opening VirtualBox, you need the "brain" of the operation—the ISO image.

You can get an evaluation version (typically a 180-day trial) from the Microsoft Evaluation Center .