Hyper-V vs. VMware ESXi

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Hyper-V
Score 8.8 out of 10
N/A
N/A
$24.95
per month
VMware ESXi
Score 9.0 out of 10
N/A
A 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-VVMware 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
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Hyper-VVMware ESXi
Free Trial
NoNo
Free/Freemium Version
NoYes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Hyper-VVMware ESXi
Considered Both Products
Hyper-V
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 …
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.
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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.
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 …
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.
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 …
Chose Hyper-V
Hyper-V is much less expensive than VMware, which is always a plus. It is also more friendly to new administrators trying to pick up the system for the first time. With that said I would consider VMware to be slightly more enterprise friendly when it comes to features and …
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 …
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 …
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. …
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, …
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.
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 …
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 …
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.
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
Chose Hyper-V
  • Installing Hyper-V from the same media as the windows servers.
  • The default windows GUI makes Hyper-V easier to use for junior server managers.
  • Hyper-V gives the feeling that you already know it, while other products like VMware and VirtualBox need their own learning curve before …
VMware ESXi
Chose VMware ESXi
Building and operating in a virtual environment would be impossible without a reliable and efficient virtualization platform, such as VMware and Hyper-V. Before deciding which platform to choose for conducting your business operations, consider the differences in VMware and Hype…
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…
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.
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 …
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 …
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 …
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.
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[.]
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 …
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 …
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 …
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 …
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.
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.
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 …
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…
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 …
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 …
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. …
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 …
Chose VMware ESXi
ESXi continues to lead the pack in compatibility, simplicity, reliability, support, everything.
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.
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.
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.
Chose VMware ESXi
VMware ESXi is by far easier to use and the feature set is generations ahead of competitors.
Top Pros
Top Cons
TrustRadius Insights
Hyper-VVMware ESXi
Highlights

TrustRadius
Research Team Insight
Published

Hyper-V and VMware Exsi are both server virtualization software designed to reduce the need for physical systems. Both solutions allow for server partitioning, so users can create multiple virtual servers that can each run multiple instances of different operating systems.

Both VMware Exsi and Hyper-V are very popular with mid-sized businesses. VMware Exsi tends to be more popular with larger enterprises, perhaps due to its excellent stability and compatibility with other VMware software. Hyper-V is more popular with smaller businesses, likely due to its lower costs and simple migrations.

Features

Hyper-V and VMware Exsi both offer the essential server virtualization features, but they also each have some standout features that set them apart.

Hyper-V allows for quick deployments. Users can get new virtual servers set up in mere minutes. Quick server deployment may be important for organizations that will need to set up new servers often or have a limited amount of staff to handle all server deployment. Hyper-V also offers strong security features with the windows software it is packaged in with, Windows Active Directory. Lastly, it is effortless to create snapshot backups using Hyper-V, allowing new users to minimize data loss when mistakes are made.

VMware Exsi offers extreme stability for its virtual servers. Users are unlikely to experience a crash due to software error when using VMware Exsi. Businesses that utilize VMware technologies such as vSphere can also benefit from VMware Exsi’s seamless integrations with VMware software.

Limitations

Hyper-V and VMware Exsi both offer robust features for server virtualization, but they also have a few limitations that are important to consider.

Hyper-V has limited support for operating systems besides Windows. Though there are options for setting up Linux servers, it is not as easy or versatile as VMware Exsi. Hyper-V is also not quite as stable as VMware Exsi. Though Hyper-V crashes are still rare, and backup screenshots mitigate risk, crashes are more likely to occur compared to VMware Exsi.

VMware Exsi can be challenging to implement with some hardware as not all hardware is compatible with it. Additionally, VMware Exsi is not as user-friendly as Hyper-V, which is comparatively straightforward. Lastly, VMware Exsi doesn’t have backup features that are as robust as Hyper-V. As a result, care must be taken to avoid data loss when rollbacks are necessary.

Pricing

Hyper-V offers a free pricing package with limited features. This package is ideal for smaller businesses with smaller virtualization needs. Pricing for Hyper-V is dependent on organizational requirements but can stretch as high as $4,000 or more. The cost of Hyper-V can also increase based on what support the business needs.

VMware Exsi is available for free as part of the vSphere Hypervisor package, which includes essential tools for server virtualization. Additionally, the vSphere enterprise packages include VMware Exsi along with other VMware software, licensing, and support. Licensing for the vSphere package starts at $995.00 and can reach as high as $5395.00. Support and software subscriptions start at $270.00 per year and can reach as high as $2769.00 per year.

Features
Hyper-VVMware ESXi
Server Virtualization
Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Product A and Product B
Hyper-V
8.5
70 Ratings
2% above category average
VMware ESXi
8.7
127 Ratings
4% above category average
Virtual machine automated provisioning8.958 Ratings8.5115 Ratings
Management console6.970 Ratings8.8127 Ratings
Live virtual machine backup9.462 Ratings8.4111 Ratings
Live virtual machine migration8.465 Ratings9.3115 Ratings
Hypervisor-level security8.865 Ratings8.3116 Ratings
Best Alternatives
Hyper-VVMware ESXi
Small Businesses
Proxmox VE
Proxmox VE
Score 9.3 out of 10
Proxmox VE
Proxmox VE
Score 9.3 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
Enterprises
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
VMware vSOM (discontinued)
Score 10.0 out of 10
All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
User Ratings
Hyper-VVMware ESXi
Likelihood to Recommend
8.9
(71 ratings)
9.0
(128 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(6 ratings)
10.0
(6 ratings)
Usability
8.3
(7 ratings)
9.1
(5 ratings)
Availability
9.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Performance
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.1
(2 ratings)
Support Rating
7.5
(16 ratings)
9.8
(55 ratings)
In-Person Training
8.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Implementation Rating
5.0
(3 ratings)
10.0
(3 ratings)
Configurability
9.0
(1 ratings)
9.9
(2 ratings)
Contract Terms and Pricing Model
-
(0 ratings)
5.7
(2 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.0
(1 ratings)
9.9
(2 ratings)
Product Scalability
9.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor post-sale
9.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
Vendor pre-sale
9.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(2 ratings)
User Testimonials
Hyper-VVMware ESXi
Likelihood to Recommend
Microsoft
If budgets are stretched, Hyper-V is a very cost effective solution. Any veteran MS Windows administrators will have little issue in getting to grips with this. If you are familiar with VMware solutions, then you may find Hyper-V a little frustrating as it does lack some of the functionality of those products, however nothing that will prevent you from managing your virtual workloads and estate. Since rolling out Hyper-V 2019 we have had no real issues with it; ESXi seemed to have more issues and was less forgiving with hardware compatibility.
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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!
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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.
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.
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Cons
Microsoft
  • The only issue I have with Hyper-V is I am unable to use Veeam on my Windows 2016 Server to backup my FreeBSD HAProxy VM.
  • There is some sort of checkpoint issue that I have been unable to figure out, but it works just fine on my Windows 2012 Servers. I do believe this is a Microsoft issue and not a Veeam issue though.
  • Another thing that could be useful that Hyper-V does not have would be some sort of GUI that shows the status of all the VM's on a given server to help us manage them easier and know what is going on. However, I do have Zabbix for this and that does a good job at monitoring all my servers.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Usability
Microsoft
It is very easy to configure new virtual machines and manage them. But you have to use different interfaces to perform various tasks. Especially as soon as it comes to clustering you have to use at least two different interfaces (Hyper-V Manager and Failover-Cluster Manager) to perform all necessary tasks. The newly released Windows Admin Center is a way into the right direction to get all management tasks into one single interface.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Support Rating
Microsoft
Hyper-V is greatly supported by techs around the world. There are tons of forums, help websites and individuals ready to answer questions. I've never needed to contact Microsoft for help...because help is so easy to find out there. Do a search online for anything related to Hyper-V and you will certainly find an article with spelled out steps on how to do what you are looking to do.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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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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
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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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
  • Hyper-V has provided for an extremely cost-effective virtual environment with disaster recovery. For the size of our business, it's all we need to ensure our desired level of continuity of services and protection against hardware failures.
  • Since we are a Windows shop, deploying Hyper-V means we don't have the added cost of a hypervisor, since it's included in the cost of the Windows Server license. It's all we needed to achieve our goal of running all our virtual machines on a single server with another, less expensive server on tap for replication and failover.
  • We wanted easy deployment and management with disaster recovery while having the ability to leverage our years of Windows SysAdmin experience. Hyper-V fit the bill.
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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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