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    Overview
    ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price

    Hyper-V

    Score8.4 out of 10
    N/AN/A

    $24.95

    per month

    VMware vSphere

    Score8 out of 10
    N/AAn enterprise workload platform, vSphere is used to improve the performance for a data center. It is used to boost operational efficiency, supercharge workload performance, and accelerate innovation.

    $995

    per year

    Pricing
    Hyper-VVMware vSphere
    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
    Standard
    $995.00
    per year
    Enterprise
    $3,995.00
    per year
    Offerings
    Pricing Offerings
    Hyper-VVMware vSphere
    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-VVMware vSphere
    Considered Both Products
    Microsoft
    Chose Hyper-V
    Hyper-V is much simpler and less costly the VMWare. Administration is far more intuitive. This reduces cost to implement, and cost to maintain. In our SMB focused environment (10-70 users) the enterprise advantages of VSphere (multi-site, blade / SAN architecture, 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
    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
    Hyper-V is not only a free virtualization solution for businesses, but it's also a very stable and very intuitive environment. The learning curve for Hyper-V is very simple and there are a lot of resources online for Hyper-V. VMWare is actually the leader in the virtualization …
    Incentivized
    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 …
    Incentivized
    VMware by Broadcom
    Chose VMware vSphere
    I have only used Hyper-V on a workstation. Not to the same standard as VMware. From what I have seen, VMware vSphere console has a whole lot more features but I cannot fully tell you that one is better than the other.
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    In terms of security, VMware has made important security enhancements, which now provides the same security features and level as Hyper-V. In terms of scalability, VMware improved scalability, which supports up to 64 hosts in the cluster now and it can now accommodate more than …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    vSphere is much easier to use for a larger enterprise and also is easier to set up than Hyper-V. XenServer is simply not popular so while not a bad choice it is not the best because so little will be available for it. I cannot speak to the latest versions of Citrix since I …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    vSphere is superior to Hyper-V. I have had several issues in Hyper-V that I have not experienced in vSphere. vSphere just works. It costs more money, but it works. I am curious to see the outcome of the Microsoft licensing model as they try to take on VMWare with Hyper-V. …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    vSphere has a lot more feature sets than Hyper-V but at a much higher cost of entry versus MS Hyper-V. I have not been able to play with Hyper-V as much as I would have liked, but the setup and ongoing maintenance seems to be easier in vSphere than with Hyper-V
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    vSphere has more functionality than workstation pro and Hyper-V from Microsoft. It is expensive but for a good reason, the amount of control you have with vSphere is amazing. VMware is constantly adding new features and keeps their software up to date. Hyper-V is great but with …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    vSphere is easier for me to manage, and also has more flexibility and compatibility with third party utilities, which is ultimately why we moved forward with VMware vSphere vs Microsoft Hyper-V.
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    VSphere is easier to use and more mature than Microsoft's offerings, coming as it is from the company that invented virtualization. It has a pleasant dashboard and pleasing layouts, which are intuitive and easy to navigate- they just make more sense (to me) than the Hyper-V …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    Hyperv is great for limited vm build out, low cost companies, and limited in size organizations. Microsoft has a great product but its just not a robust and scalable as vsphere is. Citrix's platform is great for simple virtualization needs and for special 3D graphics …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    vSphere is superior to any other on-premises hypervisor that I've personally used or heard about. vSphere is the de facto industry standard, receives substantially more partner support and investment, and benefits from a significantly longer maturation period than other …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    vSphere provides more control over the Virtualization environment.
    It allows users to have great management User Interface with lots of dynamic features.
    VM creation.
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    vSphere simply is best-in-class for its features and functionality. It does guest OS management, thin provisioning, deployment, management, networking, vMotion, and automation better than all the rest. vSphere is always the first to implement new and advanced features and push …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    There's no comparison, VMWare is the market leader. It's pricey, but its feature set is years ahead of the competition. In particular, the ability to manage a large fleet of servers across multiple sites through a single pane of glass is great!
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    We opted for vSphere because of our IaaS/PaaS provider. Being one of the pioneers in server virtualization, VMware have proven to be quite reliable and robust, and thus widely adopted by virtualization service providers including ours. Also, the price is noticeably lower using …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    We started testing our virtual infrastructure back 9 years ago we test XenServer but it was too complicated for us. When we tested vSphere from Vmware, It just worked, all we had to do was click. At the time, we were looking to have a virtualized video security server and …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    VSphere is Heads and shoulders above the rest!
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    vSphere is much more feature rich and managing multiple vSphere host servers of clusters of servers is made simple.
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    Better overall performance and ease of resource allocation and maintenance of the environment
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    vSphere is the most mature and reliable hypervisor I've used. The feature set is not topped in my experience.
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    vSphere is the most mature offering in this space and is the measure by which the others are rated.
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    What vSphere lacks for looks and UI, it gives back in the robust services that it offers. Backing up, migrating, and cloning servers is incredibly easy with their built in tools to do this. It is also capable of organizing dozens of servers in a robust organization with varied …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    vSphere has been in the market longer and the 3rd party marketplace is so much more robust. VSphere is generally more stable and arguably better at resource scheduling than HyperV. We selected vSphere because we went to virtualization when HyperV was not even a major market …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    We tried it years ago, and it was horrible. It is much improved now, but we have no compelling reason to evaluate the new versions.
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    If a product just works, and the cost isn't terribly different, why switch? VMware has been more reliable, more secure, and doesn't require an OS before the hypervisor runs. It works seamlessly with our backup appliance (Unitrends), and has great training available. Overall, it …
    Incentivized
    Chose VMware vSphere
    VSphere is a solid Enterprise solution, providing better solution than the 2 aforementioned.
    Incentivized
    Key User Insights
    Would buy again
    94%
    Would buy again
    33 Answers
    97%
    Would buy again
    30 Answers
    Delivers good value for the price
    100%
    Delivers good value for the price
    34 Answers
    97%
    Delivers good value for the price
    30 Answers
    Happy with the feature set
    94%
    Happy with the feature set
    33 Answers
    100%
    Happy with the feature set
    31 Answers
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    27 Answers
    96%
    Lived up to sales and marketing promises
    25 Answers
    Implementation went as expected
    97%
    Implementation went as expected
    32 Answers
    96%
    Implementation went as expected
    26 Answers
    Features
    Hyper-VVMware vSphere
    Server Virtualization
    Comparison of Server Virtualization features of Hyper-V and VMware vSphere
    Feature
    Hyper-V
    7.6
    73 Ratings
    6% below category average
    VMware vSphere
    7.2
    67 Ratings
    11% below category average
    Virtual machine automated provisioning6.861 Ratings7.062 Ratings
    Management console7.873 Ratings7.067 Ratings
    Live virtual machine backup8.265 Ratings6.060 Ratings
    Live virtual machine migration7.367 Ratings8.065 Ratings
    Hypervisor-level security7.867 Ratings8.062 Ratings
    Best Alternatives
    Hyper-VVMware vSphere
    Small Businesses
    Proxmox VE
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Proxmox VE
    Score9.2 out of 10
    Medium-sized Companies
    VMware vSOM (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    VMware vSOM (discontinued)
    Score10 out of 10
    Enterprises
    IBM PowerVM
    Score9.6 out of 10
    IBM PowerVM
    Score9.6 out of 10
    All AlternativesView all alternativesView all alternatives
    User Ratings
    Hyper-VVMware vSphere
    Likelihood to Recommend
    8.4
    (74 ratings)
    7.0
    (70 ratings)
    Likelihood to Renew
    10.0
    (7 ratings)
    7.0
    (7 ratings)
    Usability
    9.0
    (11 ratings)
    8.0
    (11 ratings)
    Availability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Performance
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Support Rating
    7.5
    (16 ratings)
    8.0
    (25 ratings)
    In-Person Training
    8.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Online Training
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Implementation Rating
    5.0
    (3 ratings)
    9.0
    (2 ratings)
    Configurability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    -
    (0 ratings)
    8.4
    (5 ratings)
    Ease of integration
    7.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Product Scalability
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Professional Services
    -
    (0 ratings)
    9.7
    (3 ratings)
    Vendor post-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    Vendor pre-sale
    9.0
    (1 ratings)
    -
    (0 ratings)
    User Testimonials
    Hyper-VVMware vSphere
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    vSphere is well suited for multiple VMWare hosts and can be very useful in larger enterprises where vMotion is used to load balance and failover running virtual machines. In smaller businesses with one or two hosts then the features can be overkill. The addition of virtual TPM support is a very nice addition to provide vm security in a more Microsoft supported methodology.
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    • vMotion that provides seamless movement of Virtual Machines between physical hosts and datastores.
    • Ease of Manage: vCenter provides very good management experience to the users.
    • It provides hassle free upgrade of versions, which requires good planning.
    • Easy to manage datastore, networks, CPU and memory resources.
    • It also allows to convert the physical machine and bring it to vSphere Environment with minimum effort.
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    • Allow enable EVC without requiring host shutdown
    • More detail in recent tasks. Instead of just showing a task called "Reconfigure virtual machine" also have a link to more detailed information as to what was reconfigured, changed or removed.
    • Allow searching tasks or events
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    We are constantly looking for change that will benefit our company. We are not ones to stick with a product simply because it is what we know, but rather looking for what fits us best. We can't imagine another product on the market today doing a better job of handling our infrastructure than vSphere.
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    Very useful for environments where space and energy consumption are issues and management is not very keen on upfront spending on hardware every time whenever requirement comes from any dept for provisioning a machine for their occasional use, easily can be done in case of VMware vSphere in few clicks. Backup, security, monitoring and management everything is covered but at additional cost.
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    I rarely ever have to contact support and when I do need to resolve an issue, there is always an abundance of kb articles and research information available that can help quickly resolve the issue. Depending on the type of support contract you have, you may get support from some offshore group in another country and this could be a little challenging because of the language barrier.
    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
    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
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    Just make sure that when you implement, that the person implementing truly knows what they are doing and has a plan of action coming in. Since our initial implementation using a consulting service, I have implemented a few vSphere just from what I learned at the initial implementation and use over time, and the person implementing really needs to know what they are doing or you will miss out on features that may help you down the line
    Read full review
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    vSphere has a lot more feature sets than Hyper-V but at a much higher cost of entry versus MS Hyper-V. I have not been able to play with Hyper-V as much as I would have liked, but the setup and ongoing maintenance seems to be easier in vSphere than with Hyper-V
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    Contract Terms and Pricing Model
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    The contract terms are very clear and can be updated as per the project requirement. Customer support is also included in the contract which help us to troubleshoot critical issues very easily. Training included in contract will really help the client team to empower and hands-on on the latest updates and enhancements
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    No answers on this topic
    Professional Services
    Microsoft
    No answers on this topic
    VMware by Broadcom
    As I said earlier, they're always ready to understand our issues and propose the best and most appropriate solution for issues all the time. The security patches solution is accordingly to the business needs. Another scenario is their Knowledge Base where
    they're many articles that help you in order to solve something which
    is wrong.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    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
    VMware by Broadcom
    • Having vSphere helped my business quickly recover from a ransomware attack which would have crippled us for weeks if we were not virtualized. I think the ROI on something like that is immeasurable.
    • vSphere has allowed my company to purchase bigger server hardware to host 3 or 4 virtual servers, which was at a cost much lower than buying 3 or 4 server hardware boxes, saving us thousands each time we need to upgrade hardware.
    Incentivized
    Read full review
    ScreenShots