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. In my experience, it has more functionality with Linux based appliance machines that come from vendors. Using Hyper-V was not as easy and streamlined as 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 and uses fewer resources than what I tested.

VMware ESXI is straight forward dependable hypervisor, with some users experience consistent server uptime even during hardware failure and other setbacks. It requires few hardware resources, making a minimal impact on its host machine. Deploying new servers with VMware ESXI is quick and simple even when you need to configure the server from scatch.

ESXi continues to improve the platform whereas Hyper-V has stayed pretty stagnant over the years.

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 ESXi.

oVirt's biggest advantage is its cost which makes it very tempting, but its less user friendly and at the time of our comparison was lacking some features that we liked in 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 Hyper-V can be smaller if the Desktop Experience isn't used for the hosts, but this is the default fashion that ESXi has been running for many years. VMware's support has always been stellar, and its documentation is phenomenal. Hyper-V can work as a virtual environment option, but ESXi has never let me down in any environment I have managed. I will continue standing by this product and prefer it over other options. It has proven itself time and time again over time as the defacto virtual environment hosting platform.

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 virtualization platform I examined.

VMware stacks up well to just about every product on the market and will keep your business running with high availability.

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.

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.

Price: same (both free).
Management: VMware ESXi has a much better management interface.
Performance: Same.

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).

Compared to VirtualBox, VMware ESXi feels a lot more enterprise-grade when comparing the two. As ESXi is a VMware product we knew the level of quality and support we would receive from the vendor. VirtualBox is an open-source platform for virtualization and we liked the fact that VMware ESXi was housed in the VMware ecosystem. Also, we ended up going with VMware ESXi as they offer more versatility in which hardware they can be installed on. As we want to try new equipment we would like if we have the option to expand our virtual footprint to it.

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.

VMware has been the #1 vendor for virtualization for 10 years, is used in top incorporations, supports almost every software around there, and runs smoothly with every hardware vendor. The con is the price, it's the most expensive solution.

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.

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.

We moved to VMWare ESXi from an all-physical environment. I know that VMWare VSphere is an even more advanced solution for managing numerous VMHosts under a single GUI - but we have not invested any time into VShere as of yet. We have too few employees at the moment to investigate most new/different offerings from competitors - but we are absolutely happy with the products we are currently utilizing. We would also (some day) like to invest in the VMWare support portal - so that if any issues/downtime occurs, a VMWare specialist will jump in to help resolve the issue. Those costs have not been evaluated as of yet, but the appeal is there.

Azure workstations are made to run windows. Running Linux on top of a windows server just doesn't seem like the right thing to do. The Azure platform is also very hard to learn and become familiar with. A Microsoft licensing platform is much harder to understand as compared to VMWare's licensing platform.

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 smaller installation footprint on the hosts.
I also found that even with the fully-licensed version of Hyper-V, the features available are not comparible to VMware's feature-set.

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 including Windows, Linux, and a few more.

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 option but I'm happy with VMware and what the product gives us.