Skip to main content
TrustRadius
Hyper-V

Hyper-V

Overview

Recent Reviews

2nd best

8 out of 10
April 04, 2022
Incentivized
We used to use Hyper-V in our organization for our virtualized workloads. Hyper-Vprovides a solution for growing organizations that have …
Continue reading
Read all reviews

Awards

Products that are considered exceptional by their customers based on a variety of criteria win TrustRadius awards. Learn more about the types of TrustRadius awards to make the best purchase decision. More about TrustRadius Awards

Popular Features

View all 5 features
  • Live virtual machine backup (62)
    9.4
    94%
  • Hypervisor-level security (65)
    8.9
    89%
  • Live virtual machine migration (65)
    8.4
    84%
  • Management console (70)
    6.8
    68%

Reviewer Pros & Cons

View all pros & cons
Return to navigation

Pricing

View all pricing

Developer

$24.95

Cloud
per month

Bronze

$49.00

Cloud
per month

Silver

$89.00

Cloud
per month

Entry-level set up fee?

  • No setup fee

Offerings

  • Free Trial
  • Free/Freemium Version
  • Premium Consulting/Integration Services
Return to navigation

Product Demos

Installation demo of GUI for Hyper-V 2012, 2012 R2 & 2016 Core

YouTube

hyper v windows 10 - virtual machine | Microsoft Hyper-V (tutorial)

YouTube

Hyper-V Dynamic Memory and Remote FX Demo

YouTube

vtUtilities Demo

YouTube

Configuring and running the AX 2012 Hyper-V image with VirtualBox

YouTube

Step 2 - Setting up the Hyper-V Admin Console using RSAT for Windows 7

YouTube
Return to navigation

Features

Server Virtualization

Server virtualization allows multiple operating systems to be run completely independently on a single server

8.5
Avg 8.3
Return to navigation

Product Details

Hyper-V Integrations

Hyper-V Technical Details

Deployment TypesSoftware as a Service (SaaS), Cloud, or Web-Based
Operating SystemsUnspecified
Mobile ApplicationNo
Return to navigation

Comparisons

View all alternatives
Return to navigation

Reviews and Ratings

(270)

Attribute Ratings

Reviews

(1-4 of 4)
Companies can't remove reviews or game the system. Here's why
Taner Imamoglu | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Hyper-V in our organization for Virtual servers with various roles and also for virtual clients for test applications.
Our scope of use case has two main cases first having virtual servers to update/upgrade servers easily/revert changes or bring servers back online from backups and also having virtual clients for testing new applications, group policy rules, and other organizational changes
  • Editing configuration of virtual machines.
  • Installing Windows operating system based VM client computer easier than rivals.
  • Efficient resource use and management.
  • Able to use usb drives for operating system installation without needing .iso file.
  • Dedicated gpu virtualisation could be easier for VMs.
  • The console interface could be improved and shows a small thumbnail of running machines.
Because Hyper-V is a Microsoft product and based on Windows OS, creating virtual Windows servers and clients are easy. When we want to test our group policies it it best to do it on hyper-v environment then implement to production clients. The same goes with operating system quality and features updates as well as operating system upgrades.
  • Based on windows OS environment.
  • Easy to install and remove.
  • Efficient resource management.
  • Clean and easy user interface.
Server Virtualization (5)
78%
7.8
Virtual machine automated provisioning
80%
8.0
Management console
50%
5.0
Live virtual machine backup
80%
8.0
Live virtual machine migration
90%
9.0
Hypervisor-level security
90%
9.0
  • With Hyper-V implementing new software or rules on a test, beds take fewer resources and time which is a great bonus.
  • Virtual SAN management and Virtual Switch management make it easy to manage network and storage options.
  • Editing the disk option made us resize disks on the fly and saved us maintenance, production time, and costs.
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.
It is straightforward if you are familiar with Windows Server Environment.
  • User interface.
  • Virtual machine creation, management and resource allocation.
  • Virtual Storage and Virtual Switch functions.
  • GPU virtualisation.
No
Brian Cook | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
ResellerIncentivized
Hyper-V is our preferred hypervisor, as all our techs are familiar with the Microsoft universe already they quickly learn how to manage the software without a need to learn a second Operating System, this familiarity allows us to quickly roll out new systems as needed and to troubleshoot those systems the rare times it has been needed.
  • Ease of Use.
  • Low Entry Cost.
  • Quick Deployment.
  • Improved backup system.
  • Better central management.
Small businesses that are trying to save costs when software requires a dedicated server are what we have found to be the most useful scenario for Hyper-V as more and more vendors are requiring dedicated server installs for their software. While I understand how this makes support easier for them a small business usually has more than enough horsepower with their existing systems to support these lines of business apps, as Hyper-V licenses are already included when buying windows servers this is often a no-cost option for clients.
  • Ease of use.
  • Speed of deployment.
  • Low cost of licensing.
Server Virtualization (5)
66%
6.6
Virtual machine automated provisioning
N/A
N/A
Management console
90%
9.0
Live virtual machine backup
70%
7.0
Live virtual machine migration
80%
8.0
Hypervisor-level security
90%
9.0
  • Low/no cost makes ROI very attractive.
  • The fact it already exists on most server installs means little to no downtime for deployment.
  • Minimizes costs as upgrading RAM is much cheaper then additional servers.
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 have the needed skillset with very little additional training and no need to learn an additional OS like Linux.
Microsoft 365 (formerly Office 365), Microsoft Windows, WordPress
If you can manage a windows server you can learn Hyper-V in a day!
  • New System Deployment.
  • Base Install.
  • Migrations
No
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
We use Hyper-V (Windows Server 2016) to host our internal virtual server infrastructure. At the moment we use 4 Servers in a cluster to serve all our internal workloads. In addition, we consult our partners and customers in planning and implementation for Hyper-V as the virtualization platform. With Windows Server 2016 especially in combination with hyper-converged infrastructure with Storage Spaces Direct.
  • fast and easy deployment
  • clustering with live migration
  • direct integration in the OS
  • manageability (Windows Admin Center will solve this in future releases)
  • monitoring of virtual machines performance
Well suited:
  • Virtualization of internal infrastructure
  • Virtualizing Windows OS
  • SQL Server hosting

Less appropriate:
  • Hosting Linux web server farms
Server Virtualization (5)
76%
7.6
Virtual machine automated provisioning
80%
8.0
Management console
70%
7.0
Live virtual machine backup
80%
8.0
Live virtual machine migration
90%
9.0
Hypervisor-level security
60%
6.0
  • licensing physical server with Windows Server Datacenter also includes Windows Server licenses for virtual machines (unlimited)
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 Microsoft Windows Server we stay also at virtualization level within the Microsoft Ecosystem.
  • windows GUI Integration
  • integration into Windows Admin Center
  • full Powershell support for managing the infrastructure
  • no wizard based selection of vCPU Cores
  • no default monitoring overview for virtual machines (without Windows Admin Center)
No
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.
Bill Starling | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 9 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Incentivized
Hyper-V is used across R&D, IT, and support. Each department has their own Hyper-V server but can use VMs from another department's server if need be. We create Virtual Machines in Hyper-V for testing and quality control purposes and to recreate issues from clients in order to track down the proper fix for that issue. The business problem it addresses is having to recreate so many different environments for testing, quality assurance and support. We can test upgrades, patches, configuration setting, etc., with little overhead costs.
  • Make creation of VMs simple with a wizard that will walk you through each step. A brand new user to Hyper-V should be able to open Hyper-V and create a VM in a matter of minutes. Creating and using the VM are different but creating the actual VM is simple.
  • Taking snapshots of VMs is simple. Just choose the VM and choose to create a snapshot. The snapshots are easy to manage and are shown in a graphical 'tree' to show how they are related and what the order of their creation is.
  • Changing VM setting and configurations are simple within Hyper-V settings. You can change everything from the amount of RAM to the size of the hard drive along with how many processors a VM is allocated from the Hyper-V host. You can also add network 'cards' and drives to mimic different RAID and networking setups.
  • Migrating files from one Hyper-V host to another can be tricky if the VM has snapshots. In testing environments most VMs will have snapshots and it can be a headache to move a VM from one host to another.
  • Export/Import process is a bit clunky. There are various options when exporting and Hyper-V doesn't do the best job describing them for new users. Once you have done this a few times it is easier but the first few times may be more difficult.
  • Cloning VMs causes issues. This is more of an issue with Windows and the system ID that Windows has but cloning a VM is not as easy as just copying the files and pasting them in another folder. The VM setting will clone just fine but the VM hard drive (VHD or VHDX) could cause issues.
Hyper-V is great for having low overhead as far as physical systems go. You can spin up or get rid of VMs as needed for various IT needs. Testing environments that can be spun up quickly at various application levels is great to reduce the time to get testing going or to be able to respond to client issues in a timely manner. It is less appropriate for a company who does data processing and needs people at desktops to just process applications or some form of data.
Server Virtualization (5)
100%
10.0
Virtual machine automated provisioning
100%
10.0
Management console
100%
10.0
Live virtual machine backup
100%
10.0
Live virtual machine migration
100%
10.0
Hypervisor-level security
100%
10.0
  • It allowed us to automate our VM creation process using PowerShell which cut our VM creation time down from 8+ hours to under 2 hours. This allowed us to respond to clients faster and get testing done in a much quicker manner.
  • Negative impact was setting up and testing the VM creation automation process took multiple months. Part of this was because we developed a .NET interface that was used for VM data collection (name, HD size, RAM, etc) and creating and testing that application took time but getting the remote PowerShell command syntax correct and tested did take time.
I have never managed another virtual server environment so I cannot comment on how it compares.
5
Research and Development, IT, support. R&D deals with production systems, testing environments, and client environments for Issue resolution. IT utilizes Hyper-V for most of the shared drives for the company and also for specific short term needs of department members. Support uses Hyper-V to have multiple release levels of our software available at one time since our clients release level ranges over multiple releases and to properly assist and track client issues we need environments available immediately to test and reproduce their problems to troubleshoot and diagnose.
3
Database Administrators and IT Support. Database Administrators create and manage many of the VM's in the company for testing, QA, and client issue resolution. IT supports Hyper-V by supporting the physical machines in the server room and ensuring that they are performing optimally.
  • QA environments at different release and version levels to test released and in-development software code.
  • Shared drive locations across the company that can be backed up and snapshot at specific intervals to ensure proper record keeping.
  • Client configured environments to help with Client defect tracking and resolution.
  • To create a bank of test environments for testers to use and to easily create different snapshots at release levels to avoid needing 10+ physical machines to test in.
  • To create on demand environments for all the various needs from clients, qa, testing, etc.
We are a partner with Microsoft and are very integrated with their products and it would be difficult to move away from them since 90+% of our software is from Microsoft.
No
  • Prior Experience with the Product
  • Vendor Reputation
  • Existing Relationship with the Vendor
  • Positive Sales Experience with the Vendor
Aderant is a Gold partner with Microsoft and we use primarily all Microsoft products so this was a no brainer as it is consistent with their other software base and can be integrated using tools such as PowerShell.
We wouldn't since we are a Gold partner and we use Windows and many other Microsoft products. Having that consistency and integration possibility is of great value to us. Plus we already have the knowledge, skills and abilities to use Hyper-V and its' tools.
  • Implemented in-house
No
Change management was minimal
We have been using Hyper-V for over 8 years now so there was very minimal change management. Also the team that manages Hyper-V is small and thus there isn't a large amount of people who are affected when we change versions/releases. The biggest part of Implementing a new release or version is to test a VM on it before mass migrating VM's to the new host. This is simple and Hyper-V contains export/import options to assist with moving VM's.
  • There were no Hyper-V related issues. The only issue we had was reconnecting the secondary data drive to the server and configuring the RAID level on the machine.
Make sure to test the upgrade on a machine with test VM's that are either backed up or are ok to be corrupted in case of failure. Other than that there are few things to worry about.
  • Online training
  • In-person training
  • Self-taught
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.
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.
Yes, it has a very intuitive graphical interface that allows a new user to immediately get down and dirty with making and managing a virtual environment. This is a good approach in my opinion as there are few things you can do in Hyper-V that would affect someone else since it is virtual and things can be rolled back or deleted without much consequence.
I think the current version on Windows Server 2012 R2 is perfect. It allows a vast majority of configurability without being too complex. You can configure things using multiple methods (GUI, PowerShell, CMD.exe). This allows for beginners and experienced users to jump right into managing a virtual environment and making it work pretty much right out of the box.
Don't use dynamic memory. You can end up in a black hole of sorts where the memory demands and supply get complex and you start having machines time out and shut down to save memory on the Hyper-V host. Some VM's also may not relinquish RAM the way they should depending on the OS that is on that VM so you can run into issues with RAM not being used by a VM that Hyper-V can't take back for other resources.
No - we have not done any customization to the interface
No - we have not done any custom code
We used some custom network connection setting to test certain client issues and we also utilized certain security features to replicate what client servers did or to test certain setting within on own software code. These were more VM based than the entire Hyper-V server though.
There is a lot of online support with Microsoft Technet that is available to everyone. It answers a lot of questions and allows a forum for users to ask customized questions where other users can share their experiences and knowledge. Since we are a Gold partner our support level is higher than normal and allows us a more direct path for support issues.
No
Our team had an issue with snapshots becoming corrupt and we were unable to delete the snapshots to make room on the server hard drive. This became an issue as we had to have larger and larger VM's to test certain client issues that had large databases on the VM's. We had to call support to find a way to get rid of these files because Hyper-V would tell us the file was in use and even after restarting Hyper-V server the file still said it was in use so we had to find certain actions in the Windows Server management tools to find the file locks and manually delete those locks and then manually delete the snapshot files. Then we had to restart the Hyper-V servers to be able to realize the space savings.
  • Creating a VM using the Hyper-V wizards.
  • Editing the settings and configuration of a VM
  • Takings snapshots of VM's and managing the different levels is a simple 'tree' structure.
  • Exporting and Importing VM's and their settings can be hard for new users.
  • Cloning VM's can sometimes cause issues when starting either of the VM's (VM being cloned or that was cloned)
  • Moving or migrating VM's from one VM host to another.
No
The main functions of Hyper-V (creating VM, taking snapshots, changing settings) are easy to use for beginners with wizards and it doesn't have extra clicks or functions to do. Nothing is perfect in my opinion especially when you try to move a VM that has snapshots or delete one that has snapshots.
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.
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.
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.
  • PowerShell
  • Command Prompt
  • .NET
Fairly simple since Windows Server 2012 R2 has Powershell commands that are specifically for Hyper-V. .NET also has functionality to work with remote servers and send remote commands so you can put a GUI with the Hyper-V abilities.
  • Team Foundation Server
  • Visual Studio Test Manager
Not that I am aware of. I'm not sure how the integration would work with these as the purpose of the integration would be to automate testing of development software but deploying that software would be interesting.
I have not used any of these. The only ones I have integrated were other Microsoft products for managing Hyper-V and it's Virtual Machines.
You have to learn other technology to be able to integrate to Hyper-V. Once you learn the syntax the integration is simple but you still may have to learn a new technology or programming language to create the integration.
If you have issues then use the Microsoft TechNet resource for previous users experience and knowledge. Also being familiar with PowerShell commands helps as you can manage Hyper-V solely from PowerShell if desired (this is actually required if you use the Windows Server 2012 R2 non-GUI install).
We are a Gold partner with Microsoft and thus have a great relationship with them and over 90% of our products we use are from Microsoft or are Microsoft recommended. This relationship helps us find the tools we need that will work with our environment in a timely manner.
They are easy to contact and they provide a ton of training and documentation on their website. They also have a forum setup so that developers and users alike can communicate to solve issues and to learn new skills and abilities.
I was not present for this negotiation.
Ensure that your needs are stated in a complete manner so that you know what you are and aren't getting. Also find out about previous implementations and user experiences with similar organizations or implementations.
Yes
We upgraded from Windows Server 2008 R2 to Windows Server 2012 R2. The upgrade process was simple and straightforward and we just had to do the normal Windows upgrade and then go into the servers features and add the Hyper-V feature to access the Hyper-V management console. We then migrated our VM's to the host and began using the new Hyper-V features from Windows Server 2012 R2.
  • Faster services. The new server version is faster and the wizards are just as easy to use.
  • The ability to change certain settings and configurations using live VM's which kept us from having to shut down VM's causing down time to the organization.
  • The ability to use PowerShell 4.0 to it's full extent in Server 2012 R2 which offers built-in Hyper-V commands which make managing VM's and Hyper-v much easier when you know the commands.
  • Live migration of VM's from one host to another.
  • Live cloning of VM's to be able to recreate a VM that is in production and can't be changed. This would add the ability to test changes without affecting a Production machine while ensuring that the setting and configuration variables are exactly the same.
No
No
Return to navigation