TrustRadius: an HG Insights company

Save this comparison

Save this comparison

Add Product

Recommended Comparisons

    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Hyper-V

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AN/A

    $24.95

    per month

    Remote Desktop Services

    Score7.7 out of 10
    N/ARemote Desktop Services from Microsoft is virtual desktop and remote user session technology.N/A
    Pricing
    Hyper-VRemote Desktop Services
    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
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Hyper-VRemote Desktop Services
    Free Trial
    NoNo
    Free/Freemium Version
    NoNo
    Premium Consulting/Integration Services
    NoNo
    Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
    Additional Details——
    More Pricing Information
    Community Pulse
    Hyper-VRemote Desktop Services
    Considered Both Products
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Microsoft
    No answer on this topic
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    94%
    Would buy again
    33 Answers
    100%
    Would buy again
    8 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    34 Answers
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    8 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    33 Answers
    88%
    Happy with the feature set
    7 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    27 Answers
    100%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    6 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    32 Answers
    88%
    Implementation went as expected
    7 Answers
    Features
    Hyper-VRemote Desktop Services
    Server Virtualization
    Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Hyper-V and Remote Desktop Services
    Feature
    Hyper-V
    7.6
    73 Ratings
    6% below category average
    Remote Desktop Services
    -
    Ratings
    Virtual machine automated provisioning6.861 Ratings00 Ratings
    Management console7.873 Ratings00 Ratings
    Live virtual machine backup8.265 Ratings00 Ratings
    Live virtual machine migration7.367 Ratings00 Ratings
    Hypervisor-level security7.867 Ratings00 Ratings
    Remote Administration
    Comparison of Remote Administration features of Hyper-V and Remote Desktop Services
    Feature
    Hyper-V
    -
    Ratings
    Remote Desktop Services
    4.6
    5 Ratings
    53% below category average
    Screen sharing00 Ratings8.25 Ratings
    File transfer00 Ratings4.65 Ratings
    Instant message00 Ratings1.01 Ratings
    Secure remote access with Smart Card authentication00 Ratings6.02 Ratings
    Access to sleeping/powered-off computers00 Ratings1.12 Ratings
    Over-the-Internet remote session00 Ratings6.85 Ratings
    Initiate remote control from mobile00 Ratings3.64 Ratings
    Remote management of servers & workstations00 Ratings8.24 Ratings
    Remote Active Directory® management00 Ratings8.64 Ratings
    Centralized management dashboard00 Ratings2.23 Ratings
    Session record00 Ratings2.23 Ratings
    Monitoring and Alerts00 Ratings3.13 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Hyper-VRemote Desktop Services
    Small Businesses
    Proxmox VE
    Score9.2 out of 10
    N-able Take Control
    Score7.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    VMware vSOM (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    Remote Desktop Manager
    Score9.6 out of 10
    Enterprises
    IBM PowerVM
    Score9.6 out of 10
    BeyondTrust Privileged Remote Access
    Score9.1 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Hyper-VRemote Desktop Services
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.4
    (74 ratings)
    7.8
    (20 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (7 ratings)
    6.0
    (1 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (11 ratings)
    8.4
    (5 ratings)
    Availability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.5
    (16 ratings)
    3.0
    (1 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    5.0
    (3 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Configurability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    5.0
    (1 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Hyper-VRemote Desktop Services
    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
    Microsoft
    This is well-suited if you need to log in to a remote machine on occasion to make updates or change configurations. It is also good for a production environment or for environments where people need to log in to use common applications, so you don't need to install the application on each individual client.
    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
    Microsoft
    • When you connect with RDS, everything looks and feels (and is) exactly like you're sitting at that desktop. This is great for us and for users.
    • You can sign in with RDS and the desktop will be the same as when you left it (if you choose to set it up that way).
    • Although they take some setup, RemoteApps are a very handy way to let users access a program without requiring them to actually connect to a remote desktop on the server.
    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
    Microsoft
    • Remote Desktop Services currently does not support multiple monitors on the terminal server. Unlike other applications such as Teamviewer, there's no feature to toggle between multiple screens even if they were connected to the terminal server.
    • Remote Desktop Services should provide an option to scale up or down the screen size after a connection is established. Currently you can only adjust the screen size prior to a connection is established. So you'll have to take a best guess at what display screen resolution will fit best on your screen.
    • Remote Desktop Services should offer some kind of menu to send special key strokes like Ctrl+Alt+Del to the terminal server. Currently the substitute for that particular combination is Ctrl+Alt+End. But I have yet to discover a replacement for other combination keystrokes such as Alt+PrintScrn.
    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
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Microsoft
    The initial setup for Remote Desktop Services is complex, and licensing is costly. Each user connects to their virtual desktop hosted by a single server or group of servers, so a change or issue with servers quickly impacts every single user at the same time. Aside from that, users appreciate seeing their same personal desktop from any device or geographical location.
    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
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    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
    Microsoft
    There are some third party tools available that allow you to manage multiple connections.
    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
    Microsoft
    As with any Microsoft Server product, support for Remote Desktop Services requires a paid support package. These are license-based and very costly, on top of the already costly product licensing. Microsoft's licensing is complicated to begin with, so setting up licensing alone essentially requires a licensing expert's counsel. There is community documentation and support available on Microsoft websites, as well as community websites.
    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
    Microsoft
    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
    Microsoft
    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
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    We selected Remote Desktop Services based upon price alone. Other solutions on the market are significantly more expensive, but if your company can foot the bill you should seriously consider products that have been on the market for longer. The lack of an ability to easily upgrade farm servers has been a challenge for us - although it is still faster than updating an application on 2000+ machines. The lack of a centralized management console in 2008 R2 is also challenging, but you get by with the tools available to you. If you don't have the money to spend on Citrix or VMWare Horizon, Remote Desktop Services is a decent replacement.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    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.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Microsoft
    • Allowed remote users access from home
    • Shared file access for multipolar users from a centralized location
    • Cost to add additional users when maxed out
    • Purchase multiple licenses for programs to run in virtual machines. Or unable to run on a virtual machine
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots