Hyper-V Reviews

Overall [Hyper-V] is a good product. At one point I thought it lagged behind VMWare, but I think it has kept pace now.

It really depends on the use case. If having to copy/share virtual machines is important to the use case, then I would recommend another tool (like VBox or VMWare)
If the user simply needs to have Linux OS running inside Windows (and does not want to have a dual boot setup) then I would highly recommend using Hyper-V, since it's integrated with Windows very well and does not consume much resources

If you don't plan to have more than two virtual servers then Hyper-V is a great option, as it comes included within the Windows Server license. However, if your organization has a great number of virtual servers then you may have to consider other solutions, such as VMware.

I recommend Hyper-V for the virtualization of servers to reduce the cost of hardware, setup space, and power consumption. It is available in Windows Server by default at the cost of Windows itself hence not giving any added cost on software. It helps to set up multiple servers on the same machine for different purposes. It can also be used to create multiple test environments for the development of applications.

Hyper-V is well suited in organizations where the need is to store the data on non-cloud storage. It is well suited for the banking and financial sector as the data is critical and cannot be stored on cloud storage.
Another most suited area for Hyper-V is the organization that requires tape backups.

Hyper-V is great for an environment that is already running Windows Server. It is very cost effective and the solution itself is solid. Where it would be less appropriate is a project that is not on a tight budget, or an environment not running any Windows Server machines. There are better alternatives.

Hyper-V is a great technology and its inclusion on a large number of Windows Operating systems, not just servers allows for a lot of opportunity to experiment and play with the technology, both from a learning standpoint, as well as gaining experience that will translate into working with Azure and other cloud based technologies. Azure is the next step in server and infrastructure management.

Hyper-V is well suited for virtualization of Windows Server workloads as well as virtual desktop infrastructure. It also works well for building of development and test environments at a lower cost. Hyper-V is less appropriate for environments running multiple operating systems including linux and Apple OSx.

Hyper-V is well suited for shops that are not completely sold into using VMWare for its virtualization needs. There is some limitation on using some hardware with Hyper-V but when it comes to every day server user, the Hyper-V technology is so mature that almost any in house scenario can benefit from its use. Whether it is for space, power or DR reasons.

The only time I can think it would be less appropriate is the case where someone wants a server to have full, un limited access to a hardware based disc system and does not want any competition for the use of the system.

Simple setups are really great when you want to put multiple VMs on the same physical hardware. You then could use replications of those VMs so that you would have a redundant copy of the VM. You can do this every 5 minutes. Probably not appropriate if you put all your servers in the cloud anyway.

I will always recommend Hyper-V because it outperforms all competitors, comes free on Windows 10 Pro and you can host VM's as easily as you can deploy a new pc. Hyper-V is simple to set up and creates a workstation or server on your machine in seconds.

A specific scenario where Hyper-V is well suited would be for environment testing purposes. Let's say you want to learn or test a new OS for a product or just for learning purposes. You are able to boot up this OS in just a few mins on Hyper-V and then begin working, testing and learning with no money out of your pocket. You don't have to go out and build or buy a new PC (assuming your current PC has enough memory and CPU usage for a single VM.).

I do not think there is a scenario where this would not be appropriate. This is not really a piece of software that you need to install to do other things. If you are enabling Hyper-V you are using it to create a virtual environment. The only time you really wouldn't use this is if your application would be better off running in a docker/container setup.

Hyper-V is well suited for a business that does not want to worry about upgrading their server hardware every few years. With virtualization, money can be spent on backups or other key areas of IT like end-user hardware. I really do not see any downsides to using Hyper-V in today's IT world.

Better use of the company's existing infrastructure: when executing various services on a server or set of machines, for example, one can take advantage of the processing capacity of this equipment as close as possible to its totality;
The number of machines is smaller: with the best use of existing resources, the need to acquire new equipment has greatly decreased in the company, as well as the consequent expenses with installation, physical space, refrigeration, maintenance, energy consumption, among others.

With Hyper-V, you have the ability to virtualize and manage virtually every aspect of a service. It allows you to create screenshots of the state of the machine, in order to save the state of the machine up to a certain point and continue with a copy, leaving the previous version intact.

ROBO server builds make Hyper-V a great candidate. Microsoft has spent decades perfecting driver integration. As such, Windows Server will run on almost any hardware without much trouble. It is easy to allocate older hardware or cheaper hardware to Hyper-V and run workloads quickly and cheaply.

In my opinion, if you are purely virtualizing and managing Windows VMs, Hyper-V is the clear winner. If you require a vastly diverse virtual infrastructure, other alternatives would be better suited for the lower overhead, and less frequent required host reboots. Hyper-V is also competitively priced, so if budget is the main concern Hyper-V is a solid choice.

We are exploring using it in our VDI environment and it doesn't seem to be quite there for what we want it to do but it would work and would be free. It is also well suited to host our Citrix server environment. Using it as a replacement for VMware can take time to migrate from one environment to another but it can have significant cost savings.

It's great if you already have a Windows server and need to create some more servers (using the 2 VM licensing allowance with server standard). It does pose an issue for backups though, as you have to be careful what and how you back them up. We've opted for Veeam and this seems to work well.

If you do not want to pay for VMWare full license, Hyper-V is perfect for you. It is bundled with Windows Server (i believe from 2008 onwards), and it is getting better and better with every new release. It is a solid platform.
If you want world-class reliability, seamless failover, look somewhere else. This could be because I am running an old version (one of our partners use Windows Server 2019 and Hyper-V there is amazing)!

Hyper-V scales really well, so if you have a lot of compute capacity (lots of RAM and CPUs) and ample storage, you can run dozens of VMs on a single server. This makes it extremely cost-effective. Throw in Hyper-V Replica, which you don't have to have an identical server to accomplish, by the way, and you can achieve disaster recovery for a fairly modest cost.

Note that Hyper-V Replica is not a substitute for backups, because if you have an issue with the primary VM's software, for example, that will be copied over to the replication server. Ditto for altered or deleted files. But for a small- to medium-sized business, Hyper-V represents a robust virtual environment solution with disaster recovery built-in. Large enterprises will likely need to employ a clustering solution for desired system resiliency and performance--Hyper-V Replica is not meant for that. But for the SMB, you're getting a full-featured hypervisor for the cost of the Windows license--if you're going to be running Windows Server anyway, it really makes for an affordable solution.

It has been a superb environment for the virtualization of our infrastructure. We have gone from many separate, stand-alone servers to primarily virtual machine based servers without any problems. We have reduced hardware costs, allowed much easier scale-ability, and provided more comprehensive backup and disaster recovery plans with few hindrances.

We had limited space for physical servers and the hardware space needed for the virtual environment only utilized half of the space the on premise servers used.

HyperV is well suited for most environments. Most system engineers or business owners can take advantage of the quick learning cycle with the product. There are a lot of online resources available. It is a great functional, low cost and viable solution. Small Business or Enterprise can adopt this technology without much concern. If your Virtual Machines have a requirement to be hosted on a Linux based host then perhaps you should use a competitor software versus HyperV, but I have not seen this as an issue very frequently.

Virtualizing a Windows Server via Hyper-V works really well. I especially like using it to virtualize a domain controller that requires 100% up time. While you can use Hyper-V on a regular non-server version of Windows Pro, it isn't as tightly integrated and some features aren't available (such as being able to be backed up using built-in software). Finally, I would NOT recommend using Hyper-V to virtualize a non-Windows OS machine.