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Hyper-V vs. Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) vs. VMware ESXi

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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Hyper-V

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AN/A

    $24.95

    per month

    KVM

    Score9.5 out of 10
    N/AKernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) is a virtualization solution developed by small Israeli software company Qumranet and supported by Red Hat since that company's acquisition in 2008.N/A

    VMware ESXi

    Score7.4 out of 10
    N/AA bare-metal hypervisor that installs directly onto a physical server. With direct access to and control of underlying resources, VMware ESXi partitions hardware to consolidate applications and cut costs.N/A
    Pricing
    Hyper-VKVMVMware ESXi
    Editions & Modules
    Developer
    $24.95
    per month
    Bronze
    $49.00
    per month
    Silver
    $89.00
    per month
    Gold
    $135.00
    per month
    Platinum
    $199.00
    per month
    No answers on this topic
    No answers on this topic
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Hyper-VKVMVMware ESXi
    Free Trial
    NoNoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNoYes
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details———
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Hyper-VKVMVMware ESXi
    Considered Multiple Products
    Microsoft
    Chose Hyper-V
    Oracle VirtualBox works just fine on workstations, for testing pourposes. But sometimes the virtual network conflicts with the physical cards on the workstation. VMware is the state of the art, but it costs more than gold, and you will have to license every Windows Server VM …
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    Considering the maturity of ESXi, Hyper-V is something I would definitely consider using in future jobs or organisations. We selected Hyper-V after many years of using ESXi; several factors led us to this change, including a poor support experience with VMware, and the lower …
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    ESXi, to me, seems to do things better in almost every way. It is much quicker to deploy ESXi compared to Hyper-V. I also feel like Hyper-V requires more frequent updates so I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing.
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    VMware is the pioneer of virtualization but when you compare it with Hyper-V, VMware lacks the flexibility of hardware customization and configuration options Hyper-V has also GPU virtualization still not adequate for both platforms. VMware has better graphical interface and …
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    The ease of use and essentially free license made the adoption of Hyper-V in some parts of my current and one of my previous organizations a no-brainer.
    For sure it's not the best product on the market, but it will do the job just fine in a lot of use cases. Automated …
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    While many have additional features or lower overhead the ease of use and low-cost licensing make Hyper-V our preferred choice for most clients. And because we are mostly a Microsoft shop and it is built on Windows when we need to troubleshoot the hypervisor itself we already …
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    It is much cheaper and has at least the same functionality as what we use. It integrates better in our Windows environment and it works more familiar with similar tools that we already use. And it is on fewer vendors, much easier for support. Very happy with the switch from …
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    Hyper-V is much cheaper and does not have the license requirement of VMware. Hyper-V is not a product that scales like VMware and not well suited to a large datacenter.
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    I used VMware vSphere at another company. However, for infrastructure with only two virtual machines, the VMware license cost is not worth it, because with the Windows Server Standard license you have the possibility to install two virtual servers at no extra cost.
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    We selected Hyper-V because it was built in to Windows and had no licensing costs. The functionality was similar, VMware seemed like a more premium product, and had support. But those are the bare minimum when competing with an embedded solution. VMware is reported to be …
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    Hyper-V performs very well in environment running windows operating systems and performs well under various workloads. The replication and recovery features of hyper-v work well but lack some of usability of tools such as Zerto, VMware replication and site Recovery Manager to …
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    Microsoft's virtualization with Hyper-V has given us a great opportunity to increase the availability of services, thus increasing the satisfaction of our end user. With Microsoft virtualization, we have increased availability as follows:
    • Improved service levels.
    • Reduced …
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    Hyper-V is powerful and virtualizes Windows exceptionally well, with less tweaking. It is also cheaper, and allows our clients to budget more for more frequent expansion. Its only real competitor in my opinion is VMware, and that is because vCenter is much more intuitive than …
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    Hyper-V is far superior to all other virtual host software I've ever used...PLUS IT IS FREE!!! Compared to Oracle Virtual Box, which is also free, Hyper-V is giving you enterprise-level security, management, features and deployment/failover functionality not found elsewhere. …
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    The alternative is VMware, which we also use on a cluster. As this also has a free version, it's a tough one to compare. For us the reason it was chosen was as Windows licensing allows for 2 VMs with the standard license, so fitted easily into our particular setup requirements.
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    I would say Hyper-V would be a peer to VMWare. Features and stability are solid and full-featured for both products. Each have unique shortfalls that the other does not. VirtualBox is a great tool for desktop or laptop virtualization. It is not targeted as much for the …
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    The main reason we are looking into Hyper-V is the cost of VMware licensing and support. We running a lot of hosts and the cost of renewal every year is very high when compared to freemium and all-inclusive because we have an SLA. And the functionality of Hyper-V is very good, …
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    We use VirtualBox for non-production environments and pre-production testing because it's free. In our experience, we are not confident in VirtualBox for a production environment. On the flip-side, VMware is overkill for our needs and is too complex for our small I.T. dept to …
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    Both products are similar but Hyper-V was included in our licensing with Microsoft.
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    VMWare is superior to Hyper-V in a few areas. Live migration is much easier and better with VMWare, but VMWare is more expensive and you're subject to yearly maintenance and licensing fees.
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    On a Mac I have used both Parallels and VMware Fusion - both of which I like a lot, but they are Mac specific (and Hyper-V won't work on a Mac either). I have briefly used VMware Workstation on a PC, and found it very easy to use, but I do not believe it is nearly as feature …
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    Hyper-V competes very well with RHEV--not just on initial cost but also on capabilities and on learning. I know I've written a lot about learning, but it's significant when you have embraced a technology that is so difficult to use that no one wants to administer it. I've used …
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    We're a Microsoft Gold Partner and build solutions based on Windows Server. So it was for us internally not a real option to use another virtualization technology as Hyper-V to host our internal infrastructure. As most of our internal infrastructure servers are based on …
    Incentivized
    Chose Hyper-V
    If someone asked me to choose between the two I probably would go with VMWare. Maybe it is just personal preference but I am more familiar with VMware, it seems to be used across the industry more widely. We have also had to contact support before and they were helpful. However …
    Incentivized
    Red Hat
    Chose KVM
    The key points why I made my decision for KVM in comparison with VMWare are: Freeware software (I am using an Ubuntu server OS), Fewer resources usage, vSwitch using that provides the ability to configure dot1q trunks to/between VMs, Stability, and simplicity of …
    Incentivized
    Chose KVM
    KVM is free and provides environments where guests can run their own Kernel while still performing very well.
    It is also very native to work with KVM since it is integrated within the Linux Kernel.
    Incentivized
    Chose KVM
    It is a very reliable solution that can be used for x86 architecture virtualization with low overhead. It is a free and open source software. Easy to use withOpenStack.
    Incentivized
    VMware by Broadcom
    Chose VMware ESXi
    While running through a proof of concept with Hyper-V and VMware ESXi, I found VMware ESXi to be much easier to deploy, administer, and work with overall. Both products are good but I personally found ESXi to be more intuitive to use and the deployment options were also more …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    At the time we did our comparison we found that VMware scaled much better than Hyper-V, lighter weight, and much more reliable. My recommendation if Hyper-V is needed for anything such as Windows containers, is to use nested virtualization and installing Windows Hyper-V within …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    VMware ESXi excels in comparison to Microsoft's offering due to integration with Linux, its bare metal approach and its ability to function off of a thinner hypervisor. It allows for better integration with application appliances in my opinion due to its non-Microsoft nature. …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    While Hyper-V also can work very well and can have licensing benefits, it does rely on Windows in order to run. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it can add another layer of potential failure and might not be running on as low of a level as ESXi does. The footprint for H…
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    It's hard to beat Hyper-V when it comes to ESXi. Although Hyper-V costs nothing to use, it does require a Windows license that permits you to operate at least two virtual machines (VMs) on the Hyper-V server. I found that VMware ESXi consumes fewer resources than any other …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    VMware ESXi is a lot more robust and resilient than MS Hyper-V.
    However, Hyper-V is more convenient and economical because it comes with Windows Server.
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    VMware ESXi stacks up nicely against Hyper-V. VMware ESXi is a smaller footprint, the one thing Hyper-V has is cost it is free with the purchase of a windows license that allows you to run at least two windows VM's within the Hyper-V server. But VMware ESXi is still the leader …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    Hyper-V utilizes more resources compared to ESXi and it gets affected when it is used to scale up and installation on Microsoft windows is easy however it does not stand to the ease of access of ESXi, a user of ESXi would find it difficult to migrate to another application.
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    The main issue I found with Hyper-V is that it has to run on top of Microsoft Windows. This obviously uses a considerable amount of resources, even without "Desktop mode". With ESXi running on a linux based OS, this allows the maximisation of the available resources and a much …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    VMware ESXi is a better solution for medium and small-sized businesses. It does not require any pre-requisites most of the time. Also, VMware offers more RAM per VM than Xenserver (Citrix). And, VMware supports more operating systems whereas Hyper-V supports only a few …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    VMware have been in the sector from the start and it shows. Others are catching up but as the market leader you know what you're getting and the assurance that their support is on hand should you need it. Competitors such as Hyper-V are running them close and FreeSAN is an …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    If you're strapped for cash or tied to Microsoft completely, then Hyper-V might be for you. I have used both and having VMware ESXi at the host and kerel level is much more fluid and makes sense. I would estimate 80% of enterprises run VMware ESXi vs any other Level-1 or 2 …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    I think VMware ESXi is a better solution than Hyper-V was at the time. Mainly because you don't need to run a Windows OS to run ESXi. I also think the integrations available with [VMware] ESXi are superior[.]
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    I haven't had confidence in Hyper-V since they had issues with hosts losing access to storage in a cluster. I understand that issue is resolved now but it's difficult to build trust in a product when you have been impacted by downtime in the past.
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    When we bought VMware ESXi ten or so years ago, there weren't a lot of other competitors in the market. Nutanix didn't exist yet, and Hyper-V was in its infancy. Since then, Hyper-V has matured, and other products like Nutanix have come on the market as more fully developed …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    Hyper-V is a viable solution, but in my experience the management toolkit has always been its Achilles heel. vCenter provides everything in one UI, whereas Hyper-V requires multiple tools to accomplish similar tasks. Licensing costs are higher with VMware, mostly because they …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    At the time of implementation, VMware ESXi (and the rest of the VMware virtualization suite) had far better functionality and capabilities than other products on the market, particularly Hyper-V. It was chosen as it appeared to be the best fit for our environment in terms of …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    For me, it makes no sense to run Hyper-V on top of a server install. VMware ESXi seems to run smoother and more efficiently.
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    We have considered Hyper-V from time to time, but it seems that Microsoft has always been a step or two behind ESXi when it comes to features and reliability. The gap has definitely narrowed in recent years, but there would have to be a hugely compelling reason to switch to Hyp…
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    ESXi continues to lead the pack in compatibility, simplicity, reliability, support, everything.
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    The vSphere management interface is going to be web-based and you access that through a web browser by browsing to the IO address of the VMware ESXi host itself and then from there you'll be prompted for a login screen.
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    Price: same (both free).
    Management: VMware ESXi has a much better management interface.
    Performance: Same.
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    Easy to manage, standard licenses and bundle licenses are customizable, provides a much more stable infrastructure.
    Cost-effective, Comes with special features like HA, DRS, FT.
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    Much more reliable and well-integrated than competitors, with a solid central management console. Citrix is having good performance but requires a specific kernel to leverage, HyperV is good only for windows OS.
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware ESXi
    VMware ESXi is by far easier to use and the feature set is generations ahead of competitors.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    94%
    Would buy again
    33 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    98%
    Would buy again
    93 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    34 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    86 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    33 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    99%
    Happy with the feature set
    94 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    27 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    99%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    82 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    32 Answers
    No answers on this topic
    100%
    Implementation went as expected
    91 Answers
    Features
    Hyper-VKVMVMware ESXi
    Server Virtualization
    Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Hyper-V and Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM) and VMware ESXi
    Feature
    Hyper-V
    7.6
    73 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Kernel-based Virtual Machine (KVM)
    9.2
    6 Ratings
    13% above category average
    VMware ESXi
    8.2
    128 Ratings
    2% above category average
    Virtual machine automated provisioning6.861 Ratings7.05 Ratings8.0116 Ratings
    Management console7.873 Ratings10.04 Ratings9.0128 Ratings
    Live virtual machine backup8.265 Ratings10.04 Ratings8.0112 Ratings
    Live virtual machine migration7.367 Ratings10.05 Ratings8.0116 Ratings
    Hypervisor-level security7.867 Ratings9.04 Ratings8.0117 Ratings
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    Hyper-VKVMVMware ESXi
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    Proxmox VE
    Score9.2 out of 10
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    Score9.2 out of 10
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    Score9.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    VMware vSOM (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    VMware vSOM (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    VMware vSOM (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    Enterprises
    IBM PowerVM
    Score9.7 out of 10
    IBM PowerVM
    Score9.7 out of 10
    IBM PowerVM
    Score9.7 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Hyper-VKVMVMware ESXi
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.4
    (74 ratings)
    10.0
    (6 ratings)
    9.0
    (129 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (7 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (6 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (11 ratings)
    10.0
    (1 ratings)
    9.0
    (6 ratings)
    Availability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.5
    (16 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (55 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    5.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (3 ratings)
    Configurability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    5.1
    (2 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    10.0
    (2 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Hyper-VKVMVMware ESXi
    Likelihood to Recommend
    Microsoft
    Hyper-V makes a lot of sense in scenarios that will support several Windows Server-based OS virtual machines. The only limitation of those licensed VMs is the hardware that hosts the Hyper-V role. If you need to deploy many servers running Windows Server OS, it is worth the price. Hyper-V also does a great job of managing the server host's computational resources, including memory, CPU, network, and storage.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    KVM is the best solution in the case you need to test and turn up any virtual environment with limited vCPU/RAM resources. The obvious area of its use is a network environment when we want to avoid being tied to one type of hardware/vendor and being able to swap from one instance to another with no downtimes. The use of a vSwitch (that supports VLAN tagging) is a significant bonus for network engineers that some other hypervisors do not provide.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    If you're looking for the industry standard in server virtualization, I would recommend ESXi. After decades of expertise in the field, VMware continues to provide a strong product, production-ready, with an easy-to-learn interface that allows for quick management along with less costly upfront onboarding and training. Grab the free personal-use license and install in your homelab to start!
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Pros
    Microsoft
    • Easy to use GUI - very easy for someone with sufficient Windows experience - not necessarily a system administrator.
    • Provisioning VMs with different OSes - we mostly rely on different flavors of Windows Server, but having a few *nix distributions was not that difficult.
    • Managing virtual networks - we usually have 1 or 2 VLANs for our business purposes, but we are happy with the outcomes.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    • KVM is really good at providing fast and reliable virtualization for Linux guests
    • Since KVM is a kernel module, every VM is a Linux process which can be managed by Linux system tools
    • KVM integrates very well with the management framework libvirt, which is why KVM can be integrated in automation tools as well
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    • Resource management. The automatic load balancing works very well to ensure no host is taxed disproportionately compared to the others.
    • Templates and cloning. It is very easy to set up a template and spin up new servers based on a specific setup. This makes server management very streamlined.
    • VM management. The vSphere interface is very easy to use and navigate. Everything is responsive and it works when you need it to. The options are also robust while also being arranged in a straightforward manner.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Cons
    Microsoft
    • We manage Hyper-V using both System Center Virtual Machine Manager (SCVMM) and the in-build Hyper-V administration tool, the former being the main product we use as the built-in tool is very light on functionality, unlike VMware ESXi.
    • Management of storage is not great and quite a shift away from how VMware does it with ESXi; there is no separate panel/blade/window for LUNs/data stores, which means there is a lot of back and forth when trying to manage storage.
    • A dedicated client with all functionality in one place would be awesome.
    • Having the equivalent of ESXi's virtual console is something which is absolutely needed.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    • KVM itself doesn't ship with a management interface
    • KVM itself is a bit complicated to handle
    • KVM needs Qemu to virtualize Windows guests
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    • VMware ESXi can improve on the UI that is installed on the bare metal machine. The menus can be hard to navigate when looking for simple configuration items.
    • VMware ESXi can improve on the stability of their overall hypervisor. There have been a few times we had to reinstall due to corruption of VMware ESXi.
    • I would like to see VMware ESXi do better at adding more standard free features in their consumer version of VMware ESXi. For example, having the ability to back up virtual machines is good practice and something that would be very nice if offered in their free version.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Likelihood to Renew
    Microsoft
    Cheap and easy is the name of the game. It has great support, it doesn't require additional licenses, it works the same if it is a cluster or stand-alone, and all the servers can be centrally managed from a system center virtual machine manager server, even when located at remote sites.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    It is critical to our business, what started out as a way to do certain functions, it has now become core to ensuring our product is available to our customers and reducing our costs to operate and reduce our recovery time and provisioning servers. Their support is great and the costs to renew is reasonable.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Usability
    Microsoft
    It is quite intuitive. Junior techs are able to provision and administrate Hyper-V virtual server infrastructure with little to no additional training. Documentation from Microsoft is easily avaliable and decently well written. Hyper-V is reliable and does what it is supposed to. Can be admin from an intuitive gui, or aoutmated with extensive powershell.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    It does the job and stays out of the way. The specifics of usability relies on the implementation, but with things like Icarus and libvirt, things are standardizing nicely.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    VMware by Broadcom
    The interface is fairly intuitive for most things, and the areas that are a little less obvious usually have fantastic documentation in the online knowledgebase. In 3-4 years of managing our ESXi hosts, I think that I have only opened 4-5 support cases for things that I could not figure out myself or find answers to on the website.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Reliability and Availability
    Microsoft
    In the past 2 years our Hyper-V servers have only had a handful of instances where the VM's on them were unreachable and the physical Hyper-V server had to be restarted. One time this was due to a RAM issue with the physical box and was resolved when we stopped using dynamic memory in Hyper-V. The other times were after updates were installed and the physical box was not restarted after the updates were installed.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    Without the need to patch the servers with bug fixes and enhancements we whave not experienced any downtime with VMware issues. Even the bug fixes and updates do not cause of downtime as we just migrate the servers to the opposite node and update the one and then move servers back. Very simple and painless.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Performance
    Microsoft
    Hyper-V itself works quickly and rarely gave performance issues but this can be more attributed to the physical server specifications that the actual Hyper-V software in my opinion as Hyper-V technically just utilizes config files such as xml, and a data drive file (VHD, VHDX, etc) to perform its' duties.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    We do not notice any difference between a physical and virtual server running the same workload. In fact we can scale quicker with the virtual server than we can with the physical.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Support Rating
    Microsoft
    I gave it a middle of the road rating - as far as getting direct help from Microsoft this never seems to happen. (Good luck getting ahold of them.) Getting help from online support forums is pretty much where I get all my help from. Hyper-V is used quite widely and anything you could need help with is out there and easily searched for on your favorite search engine.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    I can't say enough good about VMware's support team. To an individual they take ownership of the case, provide thorough answers, and follow up regularly. On one occasion, a problem we experienced with NSX Endpoint was escalated to development for a permanent resolution after a workaround was found. In my experience, most companies would have tried to find a way to close a case like that instead of taking it all the way. Most importantly, when production is down and every second counts, they VMware teams understand that urgency and treat your issue as if it were the only one they had to deal with. You can't ask for better.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    In-Person Training
    Microsoft
    We had in person training from a third party and while it was very in depth it was at a beginner's level and by the time we received the training we had advanced past this level so it was monotonous and redundant at that point. It was good training though and would have provided a solid foundation for learning the rest of Hyper-V had I had it from the beginning.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Online Training
    Microsoft
    The training was easy to read and find. There were good examples in the training and it is plentiful if you use third party resources also. It is not perfect as sometimes you may have a specific question and have to spend time learning or in the rare case you get an error you might have to research that error code which could have multiple causes.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Implementation Rating
    Microsoft
    initial configuration of hyper-v is intuitive to anyone familiar with windows and roles for basic items like single server deployments, storage and basic networking. the majority of the problems were with implementing advanced features like high availability and more complex networking. There is a lot of documentation on how to do it but it is not seamless, even to experienced virtualization professionals.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Red Hat
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    Jsut read and follow anything your storage provider may require to allow the integration of VMware with storage operations, outside of that VMware jsut works.
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    Alternatives Considered
    Microsoft
    VMware is the pioneer of virtualization but when you compare it with Hyper-V, VMware lacks the flexibility of hardware customization and configuration options Hyper-V has also GPU virtualization still not adequate for both platforms. VMware has better graphical interface and control options for virtual machines. Another advantage VMware has is it does not need a dedicated os GUI base installation only needs small resources and can easily install on any host.
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    Red Hat
    It is a very reliable solution that can be used for x86 architecture virtualization with low overhead. It is a free and open source software. Easy to use withOpenStack.
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    VMware by Broadcom
    As long as you're using Nutanix AOS on Nutanix hardware and are paying their software support fees, AOS is a valid competitor to VMware and can save money due to not needing a license and having their server management system built into the base host management system. If you aren't using Nutanix hardware, however, VMWare is in most cases the best way to go. I cannot comment on HyperV, but most IT people I know either use it because they have to (most) or they like it better (not many).
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    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    Red Hat
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    it has been fair and easy to understand. I know VMware is looking at wanting to change from CPU to core pricing so we will see what that looks like when it happens.
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    Scalability
    Microsoft
    Nothing is perfect but Hyper-V does a great job of showing the necessary data to users to ensure that there is enough resources to perform essential functions. You can also select what fields show on the management console which is helpful for a quick glance. There are notifications that can be set up and if things go unnoticed and a Hyper-V server runs out of a resource it will safely and quickly shut down the VM's it needs to in order to ensure no Hardware failure or unnecessary data loss.
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    Red Hat
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    We started out with a two-server cluster and adding a third or fourth is very straightforward and simple with no issues. You just need to be aware of the size of your Vcenter Server to handle the workload, but still the resources needed is very minimal
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    Return on Investment
    Microsoft
    • Massively positive impact on expenses in my company by reducing our storage needs drastically. We were able to reallocate the budget to upgrading our primary Hyper-V server with pure enterprise SSD's as we reduced the storage needs by over 50% and by this we increased performance by over 400%.
    • We have deployed more than 8 servers with EXTREMELY minimal cost using Hyper-V and not requiring another hardware server to host it. We have leveraged our hardware resources in our 2 servers so well that we were able to add many new services, not in place prior, as we did not have the servers to host them. Now with Hyper-V, we deployed many more servers in VM's, purchased OS's & CAL's, but did not need any hardware, which is the greatest expense of all.
    • With Hyper-V, our ROI was reduced from 36-40 months on our primary server, down to only 13 months by reducing costs of storage and adding so many more servers, by calculating the "would-be" cost of those servers that was avoided by creating them in Hyper-V.
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    Red Hat
    • Fast provisioning of new servers.
    • Huge drop of the cost of servers compared to bare metal.
    • Easy upgrades of resources, sometimes now even requiring a server restart.
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    VMware by Broadcom
    • VMWare ESXi licensing is affordable for our business - and the licensing model is simplistic. Not like that of Microsoft with having to keep track of server licenses and CAL licenses for users.
    • VMWare ESXi also has hardware-monitoring built-in, so that further saves us money from having to be spent with another vendor.
    • As much as I hate the saying "a single pane of glass" does fit for this product. You can manage your servers, monitor hardware status, create and export backup snapshots, manage virtual NICs, connect to various storage devices. We're very happy with this product.
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